With IPCC Update Due 1 February, More Political Rhetoric Likely On Climate In 2007 - AFP

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PARIS -- Nothing beats a whiff of Apocalypse for focusing minds and, next year, climate change will be the big issue that will send an icy shiver down spines followed by a clamor for action. On February 1, the world's top scientists will issue their first installment of a massive three-part update on global warming.

It will be the first knowledge review by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 -- and the phone-book-sized report will convey an unvarnished message that will be bleak and quite possibly terrifying. Those close to the IPCC say it will not only confirm the grim warnings of the past but also amplify them. It will declare that climate change is already on the march -- and newly-discovered mechanisms in the complex climate system could worsen the threat. "The trends that were expected will be unchanged," says Herve Le Treut, director of research at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "But one can add positive feedbacks that weren't measured a few years ago. The range of possible risks and awareness of them has widened."

In its 2001 report, the IPCC projected that global mean temperatures would rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.5-10.4 F) by 2100 compared with their 1990 level, depending on the atmospheric levels of carbon pollution, which traps heat from the Sun. That estimated temperature range will not change, if Le Treut's rough forecast of the IPCC findings is correct. However, the report will also warn of newly-found "positive feedbacks" -- in ordinary language, vicious circles -- that could accelerate and possibly worsen the effects of climate change.

These include the loss of polar ice and alpine snow cover, which drives up temperatures because of the loss of whiteness which reflects sunlight, and the gradual melting of Siberian permafrost, releasing gigatons of carbon that had been stored for millennia in the frozen soil. The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report "is going to shock a lot of people," says Hans Verolme of the green group WWF.

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