Climate change hits the mainstream

You really know that cllmate change is hitting the mainstream when it appears on Radio New Zealand, albeit in a Pravda-sized article.

What the professor says is not that an 5C temperature increase will have 'profound consequences', but that it would be catastrophic.

Cloud changes linked to global warming

A new study has found global temperatures could rise by up to five degrees centigrade by 2100, with a doubling of temperatures at the lower end of earlier forecasts.

Radio New Zealand,

2 January, 2014

Those estimates put the expected rise in temperature due to global warming at between 1.5 and 5 degrees Celsius if emissions aren't reduced.

But the Australian study published in science journal Nature says a more accurate figure is 3 to 5 degrees Celsius, because of the impact of global warming on cloud formation.

Lead scientist Steven Sherwood from the University of New South Wales said previous studies have failed to take sufficient account of a reduction in cloud cover caused by higher levels of carbon dioxide.

Professor Sherwood said this will increase the amount of sunlight and heat in the atmosphere and if emissions aren't reduced, the predicted rise in temperature will have profound consequences.