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UN panel 95% sure humans causing global warming -Vishwa Mohan & Amit Bhattacharya
-The Times of India


NEW DELHI: There is more certainty than ever before that earth is warming under "human influence", said a report compiled by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warning that only "substantial and sustained reduction" of greenhouse gas emissions will limit the disaster of climate change.

IPCC raised the likelihood of human activities causing global warming from "very likely" in its 2007 report to "extremely likely" - moving from being 90% sure to 95%.

Releasing the Summary for Policymakers, the first part of its fifth assessment report in Stockholm on Friday, IPCC scientists said global warming had resulted in an average sea level rise of 19 cm since 1901 and an increase in surface temperature by 0.85 degree Celsius between 1880 and 2012.

As compared with the fourth assessment report released in 2007, the report tones down its temperature rise projections for the end of this century from the earlier range of 1.1-6.4 degree C to 0.3-4.8 degree C. But scientists associated with IPCC said the two ranges were not comparable because they were based on very different sets of scenarios.

In what may help India's position in climate negotiations, the report put the blame for warming on the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) more than gases such as methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) and black carbon - which are present in smaller quantities in the air and exist for much shorter periods.

The developed countries have been pressuring emerging nations such as India to cut emissions of these short-lived gases while the latter have been demanding that the West undertake more meaningful cuts in its CO2 levels. The issue is sure to be raised when policymakers from across the globe gather in Warsaw in November to discuss finer points of the report, which will be the basis of a new global climate deal in Paris in 2015.

Though the IPCC report summary blamed methane and nitrous oxide too for the global warming, it named CO2 as enemy number one. "The carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrialized times, primarily from fossil fuel emissions and secondarily from net land use change emission (such as deforestation)," it said.

Stating that the atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years, the IPCC summary report statement said, "The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750".

"Cumulative emissions of CO2 will largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21st century and beyond," said the report, a compilation of the latest research from across the world.

The most optimistic of four warming scenarios in the report sees an average temperature rise of 1 degree C by 2100 over 2000 levels, ranging from 0.3 to 1.7 degrees C. This is the only scenario that can safely meet a UN target of 2 degree C, which also factors in warming from the start of the Industrial Revolution to 2000.

The report also highlighted that each of the last three decades had been "successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850 in the northern hemisphere and the period 1983-2010 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years.

It also observed that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide and Arctic sea and northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent over the last two decades.

The report asked policymakers to take urgent action to handle greenhouse gas emissions. It said, "Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate change system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emission".

Reacting to the summary report, the Centre for Science and Environment - a Delhi-based research and advocacy group - said the report called for urgent action on reducing greenhouse gases.

CSE deputy director general Chandra Bhushan said, "There are not many surprises. What this report, however, has done is to say in no uncertain terms, more than any report before, that climate change is happening because of mankind".

The Greenpeace, on its part, demanded governments across the world to take action on climate change. "The only logical response to a warning of this magnitude is immediate action", it said in a statement.