Climate change news grim

New research from Oxford University says greenhouse emissions could cause temperatures to rise by double the estimates of two to seven degrees Celsius that models have produced so far.

The Oxford research project is called “climateprediction.net” and it involves volunteers who run climate simulation on their computers over days and weeks. The volunteers have generated four million model years so far with free software material and instructions that can be downloaded at www.climate prediction.net.

By 2026, the earth could be an average 3.6 C warmer than it was in 1750, according to another research report, which was released this week by World Wildlife Federation.

The area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic is decreasing by 9.2 per cent per decade and “will disappear entirely by the end of the century” unless the situation changes, the WWF says.

Yet another recent international taskforce report called “Meeting the climate change challenge,” prepared by several policy thinktanks, says any increase beyond 2 C will cause significant risk to human societies and ecosystems.