What are the impacts of climate change to the future sustainability?
Answer
The IPCC’s(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) fourth and most recent assessment was published in 2007, giving a mid-range estimate for the next twenty years of an average global warming of 0.4 ºC (on top of the 0.7º we’ve already had). It also states that over the coming years:
• the frequency and intensity of storms are likely to increase
• there will be more areas affected by drought
• there will be more and hotter heat waves in temperate zones
• ecosystems will be affected and biodiversity will be hit
• certain diseases could become more common
• sea levels are likely to rise. The IPCC estimates between 18 and 59 centimetres by the end of the century, although the level of shoreline retreat will be much greater due to landscape morphology.
These estimates may prove to be accurate. But it seems more and more likely they will be looked back on in years to come and seen as timid. Since the deadline for the last assessment report, climate science has come a long way. John Christensen, head of UNEP’s Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development, had similar concerns: “We’re breaking meteorological records at a record speed. These changes are happening faster than the IPCC predictions and they will have an accelerating effect.”
A report from Friends of the Earth in Australia, ‘Climate Code Red’, reviewed some of these changes. It makes alarming reading – Arctic sea ice could disappear in summer by 2013, almost a century earlier than suggested by the IPCC; flows of glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica could increase; and faster and more significant sea level rises, ocean cidification, decreases in the absorption of CO2 by the oceans, and releases of greenhouse gases from soil and forests due to warming – are all anticipated.
Reference
The IPPC AR4 Synthesis Report