19 June 2007Inquirer.net
A group of US scientists have warned that a UN panel on climate change underestimated the scale of sea-level increases this century resulting from global warming, The Independent reported on Tuesday.
The six scientists cautioned that the Earth is in "imminent peril" in a 29-page article published in the July 15 issue of the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A."
"Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures," wrote the group led by James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
They predict in their paper, "Climate change and trace gases" that sea levels might rise by several meters by 2100, according to The Independent.
That compares to a forecast from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in a February report that predicts sea levels increasing between 18 and 59 centimeters.
The other scientists involved in the paper were Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha and Gary Russell, also of the Goddard Institute, David Lea of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Mark Siddall of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.
