INTERVIEW-Ice cap melt seen "very, very alarming"*

02 Oct 2007 17:16:11 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Gerard Wynn and Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Record melting of Arctic sea ice this year
sent a "very alarming" signal about warming at the North Pole, but it
couldn't all definitely be blamed on manmade climate change, the U.N.'s
top weatherman said on Tuesday.

The amount of Arctic ice which melted this summer beat a previous
record, set two years ago, by an area more than four times the size of
Britain, a 30-year satellite record shows.

"This year was quite exceptional ... the melting of the Arctic ice ...
it's quite spectacular," Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World
Meteorological Organisation, told Reuters.

"Can it all be attributed to climate change? That's very difficult. It's
very, very alarming," he said. His answer to how best to interpret the
melt was -- "let's do more research".

"What it means is that we have to monitor that very, very carefully.
It's a warning signal."

Melting of sea ice doesn't affect sea levels because it's entire volume
is already in the water, but scientists fear if it melted that could
trigger more warming and melting of ice sheets over Greenland, which
could raise sea levels by 7 metres.

Asked if scientists should have better predicted the rate of sea ice
melting now seen Jarraud said: "I don't know the answer. It's a
difficult question. Some of the models predicted faster melting than
others."

The prospects for avoiding dangerous climate change depended on the
world putting in place measures to cut emissions of greenhouse gases
blamed for heating the planet, he said.

But things were looking up.

"There's a lot more political attention on this issue. I take it as a
positive signal," he said, referring to two high-level climate meetings
last week hosted by the United Nations and the United States in New York
and Washington.

POLITICAL ATTENTION

Vast geographical and scientific gaps in the global meteorological and
oceanographic monitoring system had to be filled urgently, said Jarraud.

The world's weather centres spent $5-10 billion a year in total, and for
every extra $1 billion spent up to 10 times that amount could be saved
in preparing for and better reacting to climate disasters, Jarraud said.
The ultimate goal, he said, would be to refine climate change
forecasting from a coarse global level down towards a regional or even
national level so governments could plan in detail how to prepare.

"We are very confident that over the next five to 10 years we will be
better able to answer questions of regional outlook," Jarraud said.

The U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this
year concluded global warming was definitely happening and almost
certainly manmade.

A fifth such IPCC report in six years time would yield answers to
whether the increasing frequency and severity of specific extreme
weather events, like hurricanes, floods and heatwaves, was linked to
climate change.

"I'm confident for example that in the next report we might give a
better answer with respect to the link between global warming and
tropical cyclones," Jarraud said. "There seems to be a growing consensus
that global warming may... lead to more of the very intense hurricanes,
category 4 and 5."