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  Yahoo News 29 Mar 07
Spending on forecasting can offset climate warming threat: experts

PlanetArk 20 Mar 07
Global Warming Action Could Curb Nightmare Impacts
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

PlanetArk 20 Mar 07
Natural Disasters Will Increase - UN Meteorologists

SPAIN: March 20, 2007 MADRID - Global warming is likely to bring more tidal waves, floods and hurricanes, leading meteorologists said on Monday.

"What we know is that global warming is very likely to lead in the future to more frequent tidal waves," the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) told a news conference ahead of a meeting in Madrid on Monday.

"Heavy precipitation events are very likely to become more frequent ... and it's likely that hurricanes and cyclones will become more intense," Michel Jarraud said. He was speaking at the start of a four day conference of the WMO, a United Nations specialised agency for weather, climate and water.

The WMO's President Alexander Bedritsky said flooding in mid and higher latitudes in Western Europe had already become more common. In Russia the number of damaging weather incidents logged in a year now averages more than one a day, said Bedritsky, who is also head of the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, Roshydromet. "There's a constant increase of around 6 percent a year," he said.

A draft survey by top UN climate scientists is due for release in Brussels on April 6. It says climate change, widely blamed on the burning of fossil fuels, is already underway with impacts ranging from melting glaciers to earlier than normal plant growth in spring. Meteorologists must increasingly consider climate change projections in their forecasting, former WMO president John Zillman told the Madrid conference, which is due to publish the conclusions of its four day meeting on Thursday.

PlanetArk 20 Mar 07
Global Warming Action Could Curb Nightmare Impacts
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO - Cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases can mute the worst impacts of global warming, such as water shortages for billions of people or extinction of almost half of Amazonian tree species, a draft UN report shows.

The report, due for release on April 6, foresees ever worsening damage to the planet as temperatures gain, including rising seas that could swamp low-lying Pacific island states or declining crop yields that could mean hunger for millions.

"The longer we go without action (to curb greenhouse gases) the more likely it is that some of the big feedbacks will kick in," Richard Betts, manager of the climate impacts research team at the British Met Office and Hadley Centre.

"We can make a big difference by either choosing a low emissions scenario or a high emissions scenario," said Gunnar Myhre, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

Both were among lead authors of a UN climate report in February, based on the work of 2,500 scientists, that laid out scenarios of temperature rises of 1.1-6.4 Celsius (2 to 11.5 Fahrenheit) by 2100 over 1990 levels.

In the scenarios, the biggest temperature gain comes if the world stays dependent on fossil fuels, with 70 percent of energy in 2100 from sources such as coal and gas, and sharply raises greenhouse gas emissions.

SHIFT TO RENEWABLES

The scenario with the smallest temperature gain, below about 3 Celsius (5.4 F), assumes that carbon emissions will dip by 2100 by when the world will get about half its energy from renewable sources.

The draft report, due for release in Brussels, will build on the first part and lay out the regional impacts of climate change, such as a drying of the Amazon basin or a sharp contraction of vast Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers in Asia.

In the draft, a temperature rise above about 3C could mean a sharp expansion in water shortages, for 1.1 to 3.2 billion people.

At about that level potential crop yields would also start to fall in all parts of the world after briefly benefiting farmers in some regions away from the tropics.

And above about a 4 Celsius (7.2 F) gain, one scenario sees a potential extinction of about 45 percent of Amazonian tree species.

"The uncertainties in the emissions scenarios are as large, if not larger, than uncertainties about the response of the climate" to greenhouse gases, Betts said. Both Betts and Myhre declined comment on the regional impacts.

"The scenarios depend on the evolution of society, how population will grow, what technology will be used, how the economy will grow," he said.

Yahoo News 29 Mar 07
Spending on forecasting can offset climate warming threat: experts

Every euro spent on weather forecasting technology can bring sevenfold savings in dealing with the consequences of climate change, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said Monday.

"It has been shown that each euro spent on predicting the vagaries of the weather allows seven to be saved for remedying economic losses" emanating from natural disasters, WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said. Jarraud was opening a four-day conference, hosted by the Spanish government, on how to make improved use of meteorological data and the social and economic benefits to society of products and services provided by meteorologists and hydrologists.

"Decision-making linked to meteorology daily affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people wordwide," said Jarraud after Spain's Queen Sofia had opened the conference. The focus of the opening day of the meeting was on the dangers of climate change and how to warn of natural disasters linked to the phenomenon.

The most recent UN-sponsored report on climate change, published last month, warned global temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and four degrees Celsius by 2100, bringing increased prevalence of drought, heatwaves and heavy rainfall.

"The threat is real," WMO chairman Alexander Bedritsky warned. "All the money which can be invested in prevention will have positive consequences," he stressed.
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