New WWF Report Impacts of Warming Arctic More Dire than We Thought
03.09.2009 - Atmosphere & Space, Water & Oceans, Land & Geology, Ice & Snow, Human Dimension, Other, Arctic
A new report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications, gives projections more ominous than previous projections such as those of the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. The unprecedented peer-reviewed report ibrought together topclimate scientists to assess the current science on Arctic warming.
Dr Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change advisor for WWF's Arctic programme, mentioned that "a warming Arctic is much more than a local problem" and that keeping the Arctic cold enough is necessary to other parts of the planet from suffering ill effects, as the loss of sea ice will eventually lead to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America. Moreover, frozen soils and wetlands in the Arctic store twice as much carbon as is held in the atmosphere, and are likely to release carbon in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane as they thaw.
The report - the first to ever incorporate ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in its sea level projections - predicts that sea level will rise more than one metre by 2100 - more than twice the amount in the IPCC's Fourth Assesment Report, which excluded the contribution of ice sheets from their projections. Such a rise could affect as much as one quarter of the world's population.
The WWF also joined with other NGOs to produce a model climate treaty for Copenhagen in December 2009, which they believe must include deeper and faster emission cuts if mankind is to avoid the ill effects of Arctic warming.
