A news story by AP science writer SETH BORENSTEIN was zooming around the planet this morning with an early glimpse of controversies arising from a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, due out Friday, doesn’t take into account the accelerating meltdown observed in the past few years on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, according to several scientists.
And that means estimates of sea level rise over the next century may be far too low. Predictions by the IPCC report of 5 to 22 inches could get swamped by the 40 to 55 inches suggested by new melt rates.
The AP report begins:
Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version.
Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don’t include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations:
They “don’t take into account the gorillas – Greenland and Antarctica,” said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. “I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century.”
Thompson has traveled all over the world collecting ice cores from glaciers and ice sheets. He was in Alaska on Mount Bona in the early 2000s.
Also quoted in the article: Bob Corell, the scientist who coordinated the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
“If the IPCC comes out with significantly less than one meter (about 39 inches of sea level rise), there will be people in the science community saying we don’t think that’s a fair reflection of what we know,” Corell told the AP.
Stay tuned. Corell will be in Anchorage Feb. 12 to speak at the Alaska Forum on the Environment. Climate change will be the major topic.