Three of the UK’s leading scientific research bodies united to warn of the need for action to cut carbon emissions, as they said evidence for “dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change” was growing.
In the run up to crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month, the Royal Society, the Met Office and the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) said scientific data underpinning negotiations for a new deal to cut the emissions which cause rising temperatures was “very strong”.
Evidence for dangerous global warming has “strengthened significantly” since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in 2007 that without action to reduce emissions, the world could be facing increasing droughts, floods, loss of wildlife, rising seas and refugees in the future.
Global carbon dioxide levels are continuing to rise, the decade 2000-2009 has been warmer on average than any in the past 150 years, Arctic summer ice cover declined sharply in 2007 and 2008 and the changes in rainfall that have been seen are at the upper limits of what scientists had predicted.
Prof Julia Slingo, chief scientist of the Met Office, Prof Alan Thorpe, chief executive of Nerc, and Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, also said there was increasing evidence of damaging climate events already happening.
The floods in the UK in 2007, the 2003 heatwave across Europe, persistent drought in Australia and sea level rises in the Maldives were all “consistent” with the projections of emerging impacts of climate change, they said. And they warned that without action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, “we can expect much larger changes in the coming decades than have been seen so far”.
Across the world “known or probable damage includes ocean acidification, loss of rainforests, degradation of ecosystems and desertification”, they said. But reducing emissions could substantially limit the extent and severity of long-term climate change.
“The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe,” they warned.
The statement, published after hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) were seized upon by climate sceptics who claimed they showed manipulation of data to back man-made global warming theories, said scientists were in “overwhelming agreement” on climate change.
UEA has also put out a statement which said the volume and piecemeal nature of the emails and documents published on websites made it impossible to confirm how much was genuine.