BACKING FOR CLIMATE WARMING FINDINGS
By Fiona Harvey in London 2010年07月29日

Changes to the climate are “undeniable” and show clear signs of “human fingerprints”, researchers have said in the first big piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK's Met Office, said the research painted a clear picture of all of the earth's important climate systems: “The fingerprints are clear ... The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.”

The research, headed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the first to gather the relevant data in this way and takes scientists much further than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of more than three years ago, by adding data not available then.

Some scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the Climategate saga. Those scandals involved accusations – a few since proved correct – of flaws in the IPCC's landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of e-mails from climate scientists that appeared to show them distorting certain data.

Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, said: “This confirms that while [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says.”

The NOAA study drew on 11 different indicators of climate and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Mr Stott.

Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth's surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere and stratospheric temperatures.