2/2/2007
Climate Change: New Report From The World's Leading Scientists Underlines The Need For Urgent Global Action, Says European Commission

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas called for an urgent start to international negotiations on a comprehensive new global climate change agreement following this week's publication of alarming scientific evidence by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The consensus report from IPCC Working Group I (WG1) projects that, without more action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the global average temperature is likely to rise by a further 1.8-4.0°C this century, after increasing by over 0.7°C in the past 100 years. Even the low end of this range would take the temperature rise since pre-industrial times to above 2°C, the level at which there could be irreversible and possibly catastrophic consequences.

The pace of global warming and sea-level rise has increased. The recent observations and measurements reflected in the report dispel any doubts that the global climate is changing and that human activities have caused most of the changes observed in the past 50 years.

Commissioner Dimas said: "I am deeply concerned at the accelerating pace and the increasing extent of climate change that it shows. It is now more urgent than ever that the international community gets down to serious negotiations on a comprehensive new worldwide agreement to stop global warming. To stabilise global emissions of greenhouse gases, the next step must be for developed countries to cut their emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, as the Commission proposed last month.”

Its key conclusions include the following:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and iceand rising sea level.

It is “very likely” that increases in man-made greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the rise in globally averaged temperatures since the middle of the 20th century. It is “extremely unlikely” that this warming was due to natural climate variability alone.

Scientists have improved their ability to predict future climate change. Confidence in regional climate change projections has increased due to better models and more powerful computers. The temperature over land and at high northern latitudes will be higher than the global average. In the Arctic it could be on average 6°C – and possibly as much as 8°C - warmer by the end of this century than at the end of the 20th.