Science, Politics, and Public Perceptions of Climate Change
Recent research has demonstrated that climate change continues to occur, and in several aspects, the magnitude and rapidity of observed changes frequently exceed the estimates of earlier projections, such as those published in 2007 by the Intergovernmenta
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Abstract
Recent research has demonstrated that climate change continues to occur, and in several aspects, the magnitude and rapidity of observed changes frequently exceed the estimates of earlier projections, such as those published in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report. Measurements show that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and contributing to sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has melted more rapidly than climate models had predicted. Global sea-level rise may exceed 1 m by 2100, with a rise of up to 2 m considered possible. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are increasing rather than decreasing. This chapter summarizes recent research findings and notes that many countries have agreed on the aspirational goal of limiting global warming to 2 C above nineteenth-century “preindustrial” temperatures, in order to have a reasonable chance for avoiding dangerous humancaused climate change. Setting such a goal is a political decision. However, science shows that achieving this goal requires that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak within the next decade and then decline rapidly. Although the expert scientific community is in wide agreement on the basic results of climate change science, much confusion persists among the general public and politicians in many countries. To date, little progress has been made toward reducing global emissions.
Introduction The comprehensive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007, authoritatively evaluates climate change science published in the peer-reviewed research
R.C.J. Somerville (*) Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093–0224, USA e-mail: [email protected]
literature up to about mid-2006. Viewed from the perspective of what is known in late 2010, the report is thus inevitably somewhat out of date. In 2007, at the time of the publication of AR4, climate scientists already understood from the most recent research that “observational data underscore the concerns about global climate change. Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the change” (Rahmstorf et al. 2007). Now, in 2011, more recent research has demonstrated that climate change continues to occur, and in several
A. Berger et al. (eds.), Climate Change, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-0973-1_1, # Springer-Verlag Wien 2012
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aspects, the magnitude and rapidity of observed changes frequently exceed the estimates of earlier projections, including those of AR4. In addition, the case for attributing much observed recent climate change to human activities is even stronger now than at the time of AR4. Several recent examples, drawn from many aspects of climate science, but especially emphasizing atmospheric phenomena, support this conclusion. These include temperature, atmospheric moisture content, precipitation, and other aspects of the hydrological cy
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