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Amazon rainforest could shrink by 85% due to climate change, scientists say
David Adam, Guardian
Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, according to a devastating new study which predicts that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises.

The research, by some of Britain's leading experts on climate change, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and carbon emissions will fail to save the emblematic South American jungle, the destruction of which has become a powerful symbol of human impact on the planet. Up to 85% of the forest could be lost if spiralling greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the experts said. But even under the most optimistic climate change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is "irreversible".
(11 March 2009)

Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures
Robin McKie, Observer
Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100.
(8 March 2009)

Land Use and Density Affect Fires in Indonesia
Henry Fountain, New York Times
The name “Indonesia” doesn’t mean “land of fire” — it just seems that way. Biomass burning related to land-clearing for agriculture goes on practically all year, particularly in summer and fall. Fires tend to burn continuously for months because of the peaty soil.

In drought years the impact can be especially devastating. A “haze disaster” caused by fires in 1997-98 led to the deaths of hundreds of people and caused respiratory illness in tens of thousands more.

But a study in Nature Geoscience suggests that while drought may lead to the worst incidences of burning, land use and population density also play roles.
(2 March 2009)

Why Have Some of the World’s Best and Brightest Minds Underestimated How Quickly We’re Scorching the Atmosphere?
Elizabeth Grossman, Earth Island Journal
In its most recent official report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) significantly underestimated the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would occur during the last seven years, a miscalculation that has put the planet beyond the “range of possibilities” considered by some of the world’s top climatologists. The overly optimistic predictions in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment, released in 2007, appear to have been driven, in part, by the political dynamics involved in the international effort. The underestimation means that government negotiators meeting in Copenhagen later this year to write a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol will have a tougher task than previously imagined.

“We’re looking at future climate beyond anything we’ve considered,” Chris Field, director of the global ecology department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago last month. “Actual emissions are at or above the total range of possibilities considered in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment.”

The underestimation of greenhouse emissions occurred, Field said, because the IPCC failed to include in its scenarios the rapid increase in carbon dioxide from Asia’s coal-reliant industrial expansion between 2000 and 2007.

“We were too optimistic,” Field said. “There was no decrease in emissions from developed countries and the sharpest increases and overall intensity came from China and India that rely heavily on coal.”
(Spring 2009)