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Heatwaves and Floods

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 2 months ago

Climate Future Results Show Sweltering Britain

 

UK: January 19, 2007

 

LONDON - Britain will regularly be crippled by heatwaves and floods

this century, the first results of the world's biggest climate

prediction experiment show.

 

 

The experiment by the BBC and Oxford University began in February last

year with an appeal for people to download a climate prediction

programme which would run in the background when their computers were

idle.

 

About 200,000 people from across the world signed up and 50,000 have

now run the programme -- which plots the global climate from 1920 to

2080 -- long enough for the results to be statistically significant.

 

Each programme was slightly different, so that a very broad range of

possible outcomes was covered.

 

"People need to understand this is not a worst-case scenario. This is

what we are increasingly confident will happen in the absence of

substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions," said project

co-ordinator Nick Faull of Oxford University.

 

The initial results will be presented by renowned wildlife broadcaster

David Attenborough in a BBC programme -- Climate Change: Britain Under

Threat -- on Sunday, giving snapshots of Britain in 2020, 2050 and 2080.

 

They show flooding will become widespread and regular and that

heatwaves like the one which struck Europe in 2003 killing thousands

of people will become the norm, making conditions in millions of homes

and London's creaking underground system unbearable.

 

"By using the computers of many tens of thousands of people around the

world, all of whom will be affected by climate change in some way or

another, we have created the largest "virtual" supercomputer dedicated

to climate change that the world has ever seen," said Bob Spicer,

chief academic for the programme.

 

"We have been able to do calculations that even on a normal

supercomputer would have taken decades to complete," he added.

 

Most scientists agree temperatures will rise by between 2 and 6

degrees Celsius this century, mainly because of carbon emissions from

burning fossil fuels for power and transport, putting millions of

lives at risk from flood and famine.

 

Story by Jeremy Lovell

 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

 

From a warm, wet wild winter's day in New Scotland,

Ross Mayhew.

 

 

posted to ClimateConcern

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