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http://agonist.org/steve_hynd/20120314/climate_change_co2_levels_at_800_000_year_high


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Climate Change: CO2 Levels At 800,000-year High

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, released its annual State of the Climate report yesterday.

CSIRO senior research scientist Dr Paul Fraser says the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has reached 390 parts per million.
"We find no evidence going back 800,000 years of CO2 levels above 300 parts per million," he said.
Dr Breganza says the pace of climate change is alarming.
"In the geological history of earth, global changes of this magnitude happen very rarely," he said.
The report says the projected increases in temperature will lead to floods, droughts, and extreme cyclones.
And it says global sea levels continued to rise, with the CSIRO putting them at 210 millimetres higher than they were in 1880.
Dr Braganza hopes the report will convince people the climate is warming and that the pace of change is worrying.

Meanwhile, three peer-reviewed reports in the journal Environmental Research Letters say that over 5 million Americans would be at severe risk of losing their homes and businesses from increased flooding over the next twenty years. But those reports are based on a minimal prediction of temperature rises - 2 to 3 degrees F (1.1 to 1.6 degrees C). The Australian data shows we're far beyond that already and greenhouse gas emissions are still rising across the board at around 3% per year."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-14/temperatures-may-rise-5-degrees-by-2070/3887672
There are some dramatic charts in the video.
"Atmospheric CO2 levels hit 800,000-year high: CSIRO

AM

By environment reporter Conor Duffy and staff

Updated March 14, 2012 14:17:48

Sorry, this video cannot be played. You may need to install the latest version of Adobe Flash

Video: CSIRO releases State of the Climate report (ABC News)

External Link: Read the CSIRO State of the Climate report

Related Story: The Drum: The rising tide of climate change

Map: Australia

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years, while the last decade in Australia was the warmest on record, CSIRO scientists say.

The findings are released in the CSIRO's annual State of the Climate report, which has been released today.
The report says Australia's annual-average daily maximum temperatures have increased by 0.75 degrees Celsius since 1910.
Australian temperatures are forecast to rise by between 1C and 5C by 2070 "when compared with the climate of recent decades."

Audio: Climate snapshot shows warmest decade yet (AM)

But CSIRO says 2010 and 2011 were the coolest years recorded since 2001, because of two consecutive La Nina events.
Dr Karl Breganza from the Bureau of Meteorology says that while 2010 and 2011 were slightly cooler due to high rainfall, temperatures are still increasing.
"Australia tends to be cooler during periods where you have intense rainfall. But despite that, the last decade was still the warmest decade that we've recorded in Australia," he said.
"We've actually started to see an increase in the amount of stations, weather stations that are recording their monthly maximum temperatures.
"So the highest temperatures on record are occurring with greater frequency and over greater areas of Australia."

Interactive

See how sea levels are changing near you with ABC Environment's interactive tool, based on CSIRO data.

CSIRO senior research scientist Dr Paul Fraser says the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has reached 390 parts per million.
"We find no evidence going back 800,000 years of CO2 levels above 300 parts per million," he said.
Dr Breganza says the pace of climate change is alarming.
"In the geological history of earth, global changes of this magnitude happen very rarely," he said.
The report says the projected increases in temperature will lead to floods, droughts, and extreme cyclones.
And it says global sea levels continued to rise, with the CSIRO putting them at 210 millimetres higher than they were in 1880.
Dr Braganza hopes the report will convince people the climate is warming and that the pace of change is worrying.
"Global changes of this magnitude happen very rarely. They happen when asteroids strike, they happen when there's planetary volcanic activity," he said.
"They're happening now because we're digging up fossil fuels and basically burning them all. And we're doing that very, very rapidly.
"And that transition system has a lot of unknowns in it, a lot of nasty surprises."

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Video: Conor Duffy reports on the findings (The Midday Report)

Topics: climate-change, greenhouse-gas, air-pollution, science-and-technology, environment, australia"

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