Arctic melts faster than IPCC's forecasts

[phantom power]

As a fortnight of climate talks wrap up in Bonn, the latest scientific data on the rate of Arctic warming show dramatic levels of melting and sea level rise occurring far faster than previous estimates.

When the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was published in 2007, there was a lack of data on the Arctic, so the panel left a big source of potential sea-level-rise out of its projections for this century.

It estimated a conservative rise of about 18 to 59 centimeters. Many scientists have suspected that the IPCC's projections underestimate the pace of change and the latest research appears to back them up.

...

The new report by the (AMAP) projects sea levels to rise by between 0.9 and 1.6 meters by the end of the century - significantly more than the IPCC's 2007 projections.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15164746,00.html

[XemaSab]

1. .

[hatrack]

2. Wow, no one could have predicted this!

:eyes:

[n2doc]

5. And the Government is trying to keep it that way!

[wilt the stilt]

3. There is no global warming

Rush told me so.

[damntexdem]

4. See, the IPCC really WAS wrong on climate change!

It's worse and faster than they predicted.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. I wonder if they ever get tired of saying that.

Every year, every damn year, somebody's coming out with a new report saying it is 'worse than predicted'.

The reason, of course, is that scientists are terribly averse to being 'wrong', so they make their predictions as conservative as the data will allow - if there is a range of data to draw from, their predictions are always based on the lowest end, not the middle or top end of that range.

So the 'doomsayers' extrapolate from the farthest upper and, and are often wrong, while the 'responsible' scientists extrapolate from the farthest lower end and cover their asses saying "at least", so they are NEVER wrong (though they are in reality just as wrong, and the reality always exceeds their predictions).

[truebrit71]

7. I think the biggest problem with this predictions is the timeline...they are far too long...

...IMHO massive climate change will happen in the next 10-15 years, never mind "by the end of the century"...there is talk that the Arctic may be ice-free as soon as 2016...that sounds far more likely than saying "by the middle of the century" or "by 2030"...that's the problem, climate change/global warming is still being viewed as something that is going to happen, when the reality is, it already has...and at some point we will reach the otherside of the fulcrum and the feedback loops will takeover, and then things will get REALLY interesting...