Alaska to get British-style temperatures - study
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Alaska to get British-style temperatures - study*
19 Jan 2007 18:55:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Parts of the world could heat up by over 10
degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) this century with big areas becoming
uninhabitable, according to a climate prediction experiment.
"We are very rapidly heading back towards the greenhouse world of the
dinosaurs," Bob Spicer, one of the scientists who mounted the joint
BBC/Oxford University study, said on Friday.
"Back then northern Alaska had mean annual temperatures of about the
same level as we have in London -- about 10 degrees (C)."
Most scientists agree average world temperatures will rise 2 to 6
degrees C this century, mainly because of carbon emissions from burning
fossil fuels for power and transport, putting millions of lives at risk
from flood and famine.
A draft report by 2,500 scientists of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) sees world temperatures rising 2.0-4.5 C
(3.6-8.1 F) by 2100 unless greenhouse gas emissions from factories, cars
and power plants are cut radically, informed sources told Reuters on Friday.
The British experiment used computer projections to plot the global
climate from 1920 to 2080 -- long enough for the results to be
statistically significant.
Initial results are on the www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange website.
Projections for Britain will be released on Sunday and full results will
be published later in science journal Nature.
Coloured maps of the world results seen by Reuters show a splash of red,
meaning rises of at least 10 C, across the whole Arctic region by 2050.
By the 2070s this red stain has spread south into northern Siberia and
Alaska.
"While other places will become uninhabitable, these places will become
more habitable," Spicer said.
For the study some 50,000 people downloaded a climate prediction
programme to run on their home computers. Each programme was slightly
different, so that a very broad range of possible outcomes was covered.
The IPCC's report due out next month will include input from the Oxford
team.
The experiment's details for Britain show average temperatures up 1.2 C
from 1970s levels by the 2020s rising to 2.5 degrees by the 2050s and
four degrees by the 2070s.
"In the UK alone, by 2020 we will see the same sort of change that we
have seen since the 1970s. The acceleration is massive," Spicer said.
The European Union has said that even a 2 C rise would tip the world
into "dangerous" climate change.