3 December 2007
Our climate change experts are playing a major role in a summit aimed at
establishing a worldwide policy to tackle our changing climate.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP13 (Conference of the Parties 13) in Bali on 3-14 December is vital in the battle to combat global warming. This year's scientific report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made it clear, beyond doubt, that climate change is a reality and can seriously harm the future development of the world's economies, societies and eco-systems.
Immediate action is needed to prevent the most severe impacts. Since what is happening to the climate is a global issue, tackling climate change and its impacts can only be successfully co-ordinated at the international level.
The main goal of the Bali conference is to get negotiations going on a new international climate change agreement.
Met Office involvement
The Synthesis Report provides an integrated view of climate change based on the findings of the three IPCC Working Groups, which cover the science and evidence of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and mitigation.
Top scientists, including Richard Betts (who was the expert adviser at the Live Earth concert earlier this year), Vicky Pope, lead scientist on the Met Office's recently launched Integrated Climate Programme (PDF, 2.4 Mb) and Chris Hewitt will be observers at the main conference and also running a series of events highlighting recent scientific findings.
Dr Betts is presenting a major new scientific paper on the Amazon rainforest. This highlights the fact that the rainforest - which is essentially our planet's 'lung' - is facing threats from both climate change and deforestation.
- The Amazon forests store around 120 billion tonnes of carbon in biomass, of which 0.5 billion tonnes of carbon were released annually through deforestation in the 1990s
- Current development plans could reduce forest cover by 53% of the original area by 2050
"The Amazon is facing threats on two fronts: climate change and direct deforestation. Forests will be a key topic at the conference in Bali. Reducing further deforestation could slow global warming, maintain rainfall and conserve biodiversity. 17 billion tonnes (Pg C) of carbon emissions could be avoided by 2050 from the expansion of protected areas and effective legal enforcement of private land-use." – Dr Betts
He will also be presenting scientific conclusions from a recent conference on Biodiversity-Climate Interactions: mitigation, adaptation and human livelihoods.
- Climate change is already disrupting species interactions and ecological relationships
- Up to 50% of the species studied so far across the world could be affected by changes in climate. If temperatures increases beyond 1.5-2 °C, 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed so far will be at risk of extinction
- Increasing CO2 emissions are causing acidification of the world's oceans
- Biodiversity loss is escalating and this could further accelerate climate change
Chris Hewitt will be talking about a new project using numerous computer
simulations, known as ensembles, to helping predict what will happen
to our climate system in the coming years. ENSEMBLES is
a major European research project co-ordinated by the Met Office,
with more than 70 institutes taking part. By running climate models
up to hundreds of times, ENSEMBLES will help assess uncertainties
in future climate change and its impacts.
The conference remit
The main aim of the conference is to agree a 'Bali Mandate' - a timetable for agreeing future international action when the previous international climate change deal - Kyoto Protocol - expires in 2012.
Although the Bali Conference will not deliver a fully negotiated and agreed climate deal the hope is that it will set necessary wheels in motion, so a final deal can be ratified by national governments before the end of 2012.
Other important issues will be adaptation to climate change; the launch of a fund for adaptation; reducing emissions from deforestation; issues relating to the carbon market and arrangements for a review of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Met Office scientists are the experts who brief Defra, who can then form sound policies to help in the negotiations, both at the conference and beyond.
New science for managing climate risks (PDF, 2.4 Mb)