Continuing with its annual series, WRI has reviewed some of the major climate change science research and innovations of 2007. The review describes potential future ramifications of human-induced climate change and also documents the impacts borne already by human and natural systems as a result of increased global temperatures and altered precipitation patterns. Clearly emerging from this review is that climate change is transforming the hydrological cycle and physical climate, and has begun to significantly alter ecosystems as well as the services humans derive from them.
Perhaps most significantly, several of the studies reviewed here suggest that climate impacts are continuing to escalate. Some impacts, such as those related to ice melt and ocean acidification, are accelerating exponentially. This new literature raises critical questions:
- Where do natural tipping points lie?
- How close are we to overshooting such tipping points in various systems, or have we already done so?
- What will the world look like when we overshoot them?
Overall, the findings in this review support the notion that rapid and substantial mitigation efforts are needed, and that adaptation measures are increasingly required today—and will be ever more important in the future—to bolster the resiliency of both human and non-human populations in a changing climate.
In preparing this review, WRI drew from a wide array of journals and information from organizations and climate/ energy web sites, including:
- Applied Physics Letters
- Associated Press
- British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Range
- Conservation Biology
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Global Change Biology
- JOM (a publication of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society)
- Journal of Experimental Biology
- Journal of Geophysical Research
- Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology
- Journal of Wildlife Management
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Nature
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Quaternary International
- Renewable Energy Access
- Science
In each case, articles were only drawn from 2007 publications.
Similar to previous years’ Climate Science, this review is divided into four sections:
- Physical Climate (temperature increases, ocean behavior, abrupt change, and greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations)
- Hydrological Cycle (hurricanes, glacial/snow melt, oceans, and water supply)
- Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services
- Climate Change Mitigation Technologies
Every story contains a short summary, as well as a section on implications.
One of the major science events in 2007 was the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4). A brief review of some of the new science in that report is provided, with a particular emphasis on comparing this most recent report to previous assessments (see table). However, we do not seek to undertake here a thorough review of that major work. The executive summaries of each of the working group reports (on climate science, impacts, and response strategies) can be found on the IPCC web site, along with a synthesis report linking the conclusions from the full documents.
The material included in this review broadly supports that presented in the Fourth Assessment Report. However, this material is more recent: rules governing the IPCC assessments require that all material be reviewed by the working groups prior to incorporation into the report. Thus, there are no 2007 articles in the AR4—and few 2006 articles either. This note, while having nowhere near the comprehensiveness of an IPCC assessment report, still serves a useful purpose in outlining new developments since the IPCC AR4.
