Global Warming Effects Faster
Than Feared
By Maggie Fox
25 October, 2004
Reuters
Recent storms, droughts and heat waves
are probably being caused by global warming, which means the effects
of climate change are coming faster than anyone had feared, climate
experts said.
The four hurricanes
that bashed Florida and the Caribbean within a five-week period over
the summer, intense storms over the western Pacific, heat waves that
killed tens of thousands of Europeans last year and a continued drought
across the U.S. southwest are only the beginning, the experts said.
Ice is melting faster than anyone predicted in the Antarctic and Greenland,
ocean currents are changing and the seas are warming, the experts said.
"This year,
the unusually intense period of destructive activity, with four hurricanes
hitting in a five-week period, could be a harbinger of things to come,"
said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and
the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
Epstein and colleagues
called a telephone news conference to raise their concerns, which they
have also laid out before Congress in recent weeks.
"The weather
patterns are changing. The character of the system is changing,"
Epstein said. "It is becoming a signal of how the system is behaving
and it is not stable."
Experts have long
said that people are affecting the world's climate, and this is no longer
in any real dispute. Fossil fuels such as oil, in particular, release
carbon dioxide that forms a blanket that holds in heat from the sun's
rays.
But several experts
have disputed the idea that this year's hurricane season was unique.
"Recent history
tells us that hurricanes are not becoming more frequent," James
O'Brien, a professor of meteorology and oceanography at Florida State
University and colleague said in a recent statement.
"According
to meteorological measurements, extreme weather is not increasing."
SOONER THAN FEARED
James McCarthy,
a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University and former
co-chair of the impacts group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change agreed said it is impossible to say any one storm or drought
is caused by climate change.
But, he added, "We
know that the Earth's temperature pattern is changing ... On every continent
it is now evident that there are impacts from these changes in temperature
and precipitation."
Not even the most
anxious scientists had predicted that some of the changes that have
occurred would come so soon, he said. For example, several high-profile
reports have described the unexpected rapid loss of ice in the Antarctic
and Greenland.
"They are really
important components of the interactive climate system," McCarthy
said. "They really should serve as a wake-up call."
Kevin Trenberth,
head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado, said carbon dioxide levels are more than
30 percent higher than they were in the pre-industrial era.
"Global sea
level has risen about an inch and a quarter in the past 10 years,"
he added. "Most of this rise in sea level is due to the expansion
of the ocean as it warms," he added, saying that 25 percent to
30 percent was from melting ice.
Insurance companies
are taking the trend seriously, said Matthias Weber, senior vice president
and chief property underwriter of the U.S. Direct Americas division
of insurer Swiss Re.
"It was the
first time since 1886 that we had four hurricanes affecting a single
state in the same season," Weber said. "More than 22 percent
of all homes (in Florida) were affected by at least one of the hurricanes."