World sea levels may rise 1.5m by 2100  

A paper presented at the European Geosciences Union conference predicts that sea levels may rise by more than expected by the IPCC.

Melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warming water could lift sea levels by as much as 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) by the end of this century, displacing tens of millions of people, new research showed on Tuesday. Presented at a European Geosciences Union conference, the research forecasts a rise in sea levels three times higher than that predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year. The U.N. climate panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Svetlana Jevrejeva of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Britain said the estimate was based on a new model allowing accurate reconstruction of sea levels over the past 2,000 years. "For the past 2,000 years, the sea level was very stable," she told journalists on the margins of the Vienna meeting. But the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating, and they will be 0.8-1.5 meters higher by next century, researchers including Jevrejeva said in a statement.

Sea levels rose 2 cm in the 18th century, 6 cm in the 19th century and 19 cm last century, she said, adding: "It seems that rapid rise in the 20th century is from melting ice sheets".

Scientists fiercely debate how much sea levels will rise, with the IPCC predicting increases of between 18 cm and 59 cm. "The IPCC numbers are underestimates," said Simon Holgate, also of the Proudman Laboratory. The researchers said the IPCC had not accounted for ice dynamics -- the more rapid movement of ice sheets due to melt water which could markedly speed up their disappearance and boost sea levels.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that a connection between tropical storm frequency and global warming may not exist - "Revisiting the global warming-hurricane link"

Since the devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, scientists have been briskly testing the notion that global warming's fingerprints have already appeared on tropical-cyclone activity worldwide. Now, a new analysis from the scientist who helped trigger that flurry of studies suggests that the answer to questions about global warming's impact on current tropical cyclone trends may instead be: No, not yet.

The results come from a team led by Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. He focuses on tropical cyclones, and his latest work seems to undercut his own conclusions in a 2005 study on climate change and tropical cyclones. That study, published shortly before hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, tied a global increase in the power expended by tropical cyclones to rising ocean temperatures in storm-prone areas. Those rising temperatures, in turn, have been linked to global warming. There's no question, he says, that the old and new work "contradict each other to a degree." His team drew its results from a new modeling approach it developed.

The research highlights the challenges scientists face as they estimate the effects rising global average temperatures could have on large-scale weather events important to society. It underscores, too, the risks some advocates and critics of climate-change policies face by using a single weather phenomenon as the poster child of the day for their position.

"There are only downsides" to traveling that path, regardless of one's political starting point, says Roger Pielke Jr., a science-policy specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "If there's one thing we know about science, it changes, it evolves, it's counterintuitive, and we learn things we didn't expect before." If climate policies make sense whether hurricanes are getting stronger or not, "then we should say that from the outset," he says.

The new study appears in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It is the latest of several projecting that if global greenhouse-gas emissions follow a business-as-usual path, the world would likely experience fewer tropical cyclones. But those that occur would either be more powerful or last longer. The study also shows that the size of changes varies, depending on the regions where the cyclones form.

MSNBC has a report on glaciers melting earlier than in past years - "Melting mountains called a water 'time bomb'".

Glaciers and mountain snow are melting earlier in the year than usual, meaning the water has already gone when millions of people need it during the summer when rainfall is lower, scientists warned on Monday. "This is just a time bomb," hydrologist Wouter Buytaert said at a meeting of geoscientists in Vienna.

Those areas most at risk from a lack of water for drinking and agriculture include parts of the Middle East, southern Africa, the United States, South America and the Mediterranean. Rising global temperatures mean the melt water is occurring earlier and faster in the year and the mountains may no longer be able to provide a vital stop gap. "In some areas where the glaciers are small they could be gone in 30 or 50 years time and a very reliable source of water, especially for the summer months, may be gone," Buytaert said.

Reuters reports on a study that shows Russian and Canadian winter days much milder.

The coldest winter days in Russia and Canada have become up to 4 Celsius (7 Fahrenheit) milder since the 1950s in an extreme sign of climate change, the British Meteorological Office said on Wednesday. A study of daily minimum and maximum temperatures said that a trend towards warmer nights and hotter days was set to bring more heatwaves and shifts in crop growing seasons.

"Minimum temperatures have seen the biggest increases, most notably over Russia and Canada, where the coldest days are now up to 4 Celsius warmer than they were in the middle of the 20th century," the Met Office's Hadley Centre said. A statement by the Centre also said that the largest changes in maximum temperatures were "found across Canada and Eurasia where they had typically warmed by 1 to 3 Celsius." In Britain, warming was between 0.5 and 2.0 Celsius.

EcoGeek points to Al Gore's talk at TED, which has shifted from admiring the problem to talking about solutions.

Al's recent talk at the TED conference ... it's not about the problem, it's pretty much all about the solution. But the reason why we can't face the climate crisis, he says, is because we in America have to first face the democracy crisis. And I completely agree with him.

"As important as it is to change the light bulbs...it's more important to change the laws," he says. And we simply can't do that if Wal-Mart is a more effective leader on climate change than our own government. This problem will never be solved by individuals taking action in their own lives...we have to make global changes. ...

Oh...and also, if you watch the whole thing...you'll see him liken our exploration of low-quality oil shale to junkies finding veins in their toes because the veins in their arms and legs have collapsed. There has never been a more apt and frightening metaphor. The whole thing really is worth watching.