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NEW STUDY AMPLIFIES WARNING ON CLIMATE CHANGE
AFP
May 14, 2008

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5a-0Mk0mumAMgdcJ_ONx3JBPpbA

PARIS - A wide-scale study published Wednesday has strengthened warnings,
spelt out last year by UN scientists, that climate change is already on the
march.

The paper, published in Nature, goes beyond the scope taken by a landmark
report issued by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
in February 2007.

In that document, the IPCC said man-made global warming was "likely" --
within a probability of 66-90 percent -- to have had a "discernible" effect
on many physical and biological systems.

The new study, published in the British journal Nature, is written by many
of the people who wrote the so-called Working Group I report, the first of a
trio of major assessments released last year by the IPCC.

Its approach widens the net of data for making a fresh analysis.

It concludes "significant changes" are already occurring among natural
systems on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica, and in most
oceans.

"Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas
emissions," said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems
Research.

"The warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems
attributable at the global scale."

The analysis is based on a trawl of hundreds of papers published in
peer-reviewed journals, on data stretching back to 1970s.

These investigations covered phenomena as varied as the earlier leafing of
trees and plants; the movement of species to higher latitudes and altitudes
in the northern hemisphere in response to warmer weather; the shrinkage of
glaciers and melting of permafrost; and changes of bird migrations in
Europe, North America and Australia.

Critics of the IPCC report have variously argued that the perceptible
warming that has occurred over the last three decades is due to natural
causes, such as volcanic eruptions or changes in solar radiation, or to the
effect of deforestation and other changes in land use.

The new paper rejects this, saying the changes in Earth's natural systems
cannot be explained by such factors, and only man-made warming could be the
culprit.

The Working Group I report forecast likely warming of 1.8-4.0 degrees
Celsius (3.2-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 and a rise in sea levels of at
least 18 centimetres (7.2 inches). Hunger, homelessness and water-borne
disease are among the many risks that would be amplified as a result of
climate change.

In a commentary, also published by Nature, climatologists Francis Zwiers and
Gabriele Hegerl picked over the big dispute as to whether climate impacts
could be pinned on human interference.

They placed a question mark over the shortness of the records put forward by
Rosenzweig's team. Evidence stretching back far longer than a few decades
was needed to get a solid perspective, they said.

But, they added, these objections are outweighed by "the sheer number of
changes" that the paper lists.

............

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