Isra-Mart srl: Met Office report warns of soaring climate risks

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The Met Office's Hadley Centre has today added to the flurry of recent reports warning of potentially catastrophic climate impacts if urgent action is not taken to try to limit global average temperature rises to 2º Centigrade.

The new report, which was commissioned by energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne, and unveiled today on the sidelines of the Durban Summit, echoes a host of recent scientific studies in warning that the world is currently on track to realise a "worst-case scenario" that would see average temperatures rise by between three and five degrees by the end of the century.

"This report highlights some of the very real dangers we face if we don't limit emissions to combat the rise in global temperature," said Huhne. "Life for millions of people could change forever, with water and food supplies being placed in jeopardy and homes and livelihoods under threat. This makes the challenge of reducing emissions ever-more urgent."

The report, entitled Climate: observations, projections and impacts, brings together the latest peer-reviewed climate science from 24 different countries, concluding that each has seen significant warming since the 1960s, with extreme hot weather becoming more common and extreme cold weather becoming less frequent.

The Hadley Centre applied the same methodology for assessing climatic predictions for each of the 24 countries and found that most face significant climate-related risks.

For example, all the countries studied expect to see an increased risk of coastal flooding as a result of sea level rises, while a majority expect to see a significant increase in river flooding.

The report also finds that changing rain and temperature patterns will result in an increased incidence of drought in some areas that will have a detrimental effect on food production.

As a result, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Russia, Turkey and the US are all expected to experience declines in food production, although some other regions such as Germany and Japan could see production rise as a result of higher temperatures.

"Projections of climate change impacts often fall in a wide range, which can include both beneficial and detrimental outcomes," said Richard Jones, manager of regional climate change research at the Met Office Hadley Centre. "This study has begun the important work of applying a globally consistent approach to assess the impacts of climate change at the national level."

A spokesman for the Met Office told BusinessGreen that while the impacts noted in the report provided a mix of positive and negative climatic changes, there were more negative than positive changes recorded in the countries studied.

"What this report shows very clearly is that climate change is happening, mankind has caused it, and we are seeing more extremes of temperature," he said. "We can see changes have already happened and businesses would be advised to adapt to those changes as a bare minimum."

The government said the paper represented a pilot study that is likely to be followed by further research into country-level climate impacts.

The findings are likely to further step up pressure on businesses and governments to develop climate change adaptation measures and increase investment in more climate-resilient infrastructure.

Earlier this year, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a tool designed to help firms assess how they will be impacted by climate change and a spokesman today urged businesses to consider taking action to adapt to inevitable climate change impacts.

"It's very important that we continue to cut emissions, but we've also got to face up to the fact that what happened in the past means some climate change is inevitable," he said. "We need to adapt to these changes now, so that we can protect ourselves and our economy from the risks we'll face in the future.‪

"In January Defra will publish the Climate Change Risk Assessment which will provide the UK with the most comprehensive picture of the risks we face of any nation in the world, and give us the evidence we need to develop a full action plan to meet the challenge of climate change."

The Met Office report also comes on the same day as a new study from the Australia-based Global Carbon Project, which warned greenhouse gas emissions will rise three per cent this year, confirming that emissions are climbing again following a short recession-induced blip during 2008 and 2009.