Warming Arctic�s global impacts outstrip predictions

The Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications report, released today, outlines dire global consequences of a warming Arctic that are far worse than previous projections. The unprecedented peer-reviewed report brings together top climate scientists who have assessed the current science on arctic warming.

Arctic sea ice melting. Photo � Andrea Taurisano, Norwegian Polar Institute

�Simply put, if we do not keep the Arctic cold enough, people across the world will suffer the effects.�

The report shows that numerous Arctic climate feedbacks � negative effects prompted by the impacts of warming - will make global climate change more severe than indicated by other recent projections, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change�s 2007 assessment.

The dramatic loss of sea ice resulting from the Arctic warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the world will influence atmospheric circulation and weather in the Arctic and beyond. This is projected to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies.

In addition, the Arctic�s frozen soils and wetlands store twice as much carbon as is held in the atmosphere. As warming in the Arctic continues, soils will increasingly thaw and release carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, at significantly increased rates. Levels of atmospheric methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, have been increasing for the past two years, and it is suggested that the increase comes from warming arctic tundra.

In a first-of-its kind assessment incorporating the fate of the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica into global sea level projections, the WWF report concludes that sea-levels will very likely rise by more than one metre by 2100 - more than twice the amount given in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change�s 2007 assessment that had excluded the contribution of ice sheets from their projection. The associated flooding of coastal regions will affect more than a quarter of the world�s population.

�This report shows that it is urgently necessary to rein in greenhouse gas emissions while we still can,� Sommerkorn said. �If we allow the Arctic to get too warm, it is doubtful whether we will be able to keep these feedbacks under control."

WWF has joined with other NGOs to produce a model climate treaty for Copenhagen that gives the world a blueprint for achieving the kind of emissions cuts needed to likely avoid Arctic feedbacks.

The loss of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased in recent years and is more rapid than was projected by models. The faster flow of glaciers to the sea appears to be responsible for much of the increase in mass loss. In addition, melting on the surface of the ice sheet has been increasing, with 2007 melting being the most extensive since record keeping began. The area experiencing surface melt was 60 per cent larger than in 1998, the year with the second-largest area of melting in the record.

In December 2009, the governments of 191 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the final round of negotiations for a new global agreement on climate change. The first period of the current agreement, called the 'Kyoto Protocol', will end in three years, in December 2012. The negotiations in Copenhagen are supposed to approve a new legal framework for global climate action from 2013 onwards.

According to WWF, this framework must guarantee much deeper and more rapid emission cuts from industrialized countries, and financing to developing countries to enable them also to take climate action.

The executive summary of the report can be downloaded here (PDF).

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