Climate Change Could Be Worse Than Feared

On February 14, Dr. Christopher Field reported that climate change could be occurring much more quickly and severely than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. Field, the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University and a member of the IPCC, told an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations." Field noted that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have grown 3.5 percent a year since 2000, compared to 0.9 percent growth during the 1990s. This was "far more rapid than we expected," Field noted, due in large part to emissions produced by coal-powered electricity generation in China and India.

Field also said that a feedback loop complicates matters further, as emissions and warming enter a "vicious cycle" of perpetuating additional emissions and additional warming. In particular, higher temperatures could thaw the Arctic tundra and potentially ignite tropical forests, which in turn would release billions of tons of methane and carbon dioxide, respectively. Warmer weather is also creating stronger ocean winds that are exposing deeper layers of water, which are already saturated with carbon and not as able to absorb as much from the atmosphere. Field warned, "We don't want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot."

EESI held a briefing on February 25 that provided an overview of the latest climate change science and prospects for federal legislation and international negotiations. More information is available here .

More information on Dr. Field's talk is available through the links below:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jdeHg_a1AFREyHv-iCZm5...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jsq9Z0Y3w0JIgyZJd4_HCQ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR200902...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c8186c8-fbc8-11dd-bcad-000077b07658.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7890988.stm