RUNAWAY global warming could leave the world hotter even than the most pessimistic of today’s climate models predicts, researchers said yesterday.
Computer projections that forecast a temperature rise of 1.4 to 5.8C (2.5 to 10.4F) by 2100 are likely to have underestimated the true impact of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, experts told a Washington symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
David Battisti, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said that while there were uncertainties in the models, these had probably downplayed the extent of future change. When the same models were used to look at previous climate change, they showed a lower warming effect than actually happened.
This suggested a “feedback effect” that could bring about runaway temperature increases, far greater than presently forecast.