newjerseynewsroom.com

BY JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

In another year of wild weather, scientists have issued the clearest warning yet that global warming will produce "unprecedented extreme weather conditions and climate events."

Following a meeting in Kampala, Uganda, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed two decades of climate research, putting its findings in polite but stark language of "disaster risk management."

The IPCC is "virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on the global scale."

Current research suggests it is "very likely" these changes are already happening globally, the report said. That parallels a "statistically significant increase" in heavy rainfalls. The effects appear to be occurring on "the continental scale" in North America, Europe and Australia, and possibly elsewhere, according to the report.

"Economic losses from weather- and climate-related disasters have increased," said the report, compiled by working groups of the IPCC, created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations.

"The cumulative effects of disasters at local or sub-national levels can substantially effect livelihood options and resources," as well as the ability to respond to future incidents, according to the IPCC.

This may be old news for New Jerseyans and others who have experienced freak snowstorms, record high temperatures and frequent severe flooding.

But it strongly reaffirms previous findings by the National Academy of Sciences and others who have researched the climatological effects of human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

“There is high confidence that both maximum and minimum daily temperatures have increased on a global scale due to the increase of greenhouse gases," Qin Dahe, co-chair of one the IPCC working groups, said in a statement announcing the findings.

The IPCC is scheduled to release the full report in February. A 29-page summary of the findings is available at: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/.

Despite the report's bald language, the outlook remains hazy for its political impact. Particularly in the United States and United Kingdom, well-funded opposition has questioned not only the effects of human activity on the climate but the idea that the planet is heating.

Meanwhile, some policymakers in Russia and Canada have foreseen possible benefits from a northward shift of agricultural zones outweighing damage to tundra and ice caps and their native species.

But the tide may be turning. Last month, Richard Muller, a noted skeptic of assertions of climate change, announced that "global warming is real." A physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Muller said he and his associates confirmed previous IPCC findings on rising temperatures.