Word: ipcc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Plenty of these climate effects had already been observed at the time of the 2007 IPCC report, including warming temperatures, shifts in rainfall (wet regions getting wetter, dry regions getting drier) and the increase in summer meltback of Arctic sea ice. Those patterns have continued, and in some cases gotten worse...
...search through the much vilified Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports shows that absolute certainty is notably absent. In the most recent document, for example, published in 2007, the authors write: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [that is, human-generated greenhouse gas] concentrations." (See pictures of the effects of global warming...
...that doesn't sound definitive, it's because, as the authors freely admit, it isn't: climate science continues to evolve as new evidence comes in. Indeed, back in 2006, even before the latest IPCC report was complete, researchers in Britain were already planning to launch an update. Helmed by the U.K.'s Met Office (formerly known as the Meteorological Office), the update, published March 5 in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, is based on more than 100 peer-reviewed post-IPCC studies. The new data may shift the evidence for climate change, but none of it weakens...
Some entirely new observations have been recorded as well. In its 2007 report, the IPCC did not include the impact of Greenland's or Antarctica's melting glaciers in its estimate of future sea-level rise, saying it lacked sufficient data. But now the speed-up of flow from these glaciers has been documented. And while the IPCC noted in 2007 that every continent had warmed throughout the 20th century except Antarctica, that continent has now been shown to be warming as well - very likely due to man-made influences, says Hegerl. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Again, none of the evidence adds up to absolute certainty, a rare commodity in any field of science. On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that an independent panel of scientists, representing national science academies from around the world, would review the IPCC's research procedures - an effort to account for the 2007 report's mistakes, for which the IPCC has come under hard criticism. But while the U.N. group may benefit publicly from more transparency, it won't change the fact that more than 99% of the scientific details in the 2007 report have already withstood...