Resources for a sustainable future

5/3/2010 BBC  A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.
The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change
Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.
It says the earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.
In 2007 the IPCC’s report concluded that there was “unequivocal” evidence that
the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil
fuels.
Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in
temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott
and colleagues at the UK Met Office.
The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC’s report, has found
that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the
Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with
human influence on our climate.
“What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence
on climate and we know that because we’ve looked at evidence across the climate
system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming
world,” said Dr Stott.
The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.
“ It’s important to communicate to people what the science is showing ”
Dr Peter Stott
“We hadn’t [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing,”
says Dr Stott.
“[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea
ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the
atmosphere is getting more humid.
“And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a
picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate.”
Extreme events
The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate
change and individual extreme weather conditions – even though models predicted
that extreme events were more likely.
According to the report: “Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare
events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many
challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events
such as droughts, floods and hurricanes.”
The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis
of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research
findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East
Anglia.
Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the
climate research community.
“We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it’s important to communicate
to people what the science is showing and that’s why I’m talking about this
paper.”

Go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/8550090.stm