Basically, the ice is melting too fast: http://www.physorg.com/news147232247.html
Another study finds that less than a 2 degree temperature increase could trigger run-away ice sheet meltdown: http://www.physorg.com/news147001400.html
Meanwhile, Rudd creates a multi-million dollar joint Australian-Indonesian disaster relief centre to preempt the coming storm: http://www.theage.com.au/national/rudd-pledges-67m-for-indonesia-disaster-centre-20081123-6eq5.htmlAt the top of the list for virtually all of the scientists canvassed was the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap.
"In the last couple of years, Arctic Sea ice is at an all-time low in summer, which has got a lot of people very, very concerned," commented Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor for Britain's department for environmental affairs and chairman of the IPCC's previous assessment in 2001.
"This has implication's for Earth's climate because it can clearly lead to a positive feedback effect," he said in an interview.
When the reflective ice surface retreats, the Sun's radiation -- heat -- is absorbed by open water rather than bounced back into the atmosphere, creating a vicious circle of heating.
"We had always known that the Arctic was going to respond first," said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "What has us puzzled is that the changes are even faster than we would have thought possible," he said by phone.
New data on the rate at which oceans might rise has also caused consternation.
"The most recent IPCC report was prior to ... the measurements of increasing mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica, which are disintegrating much faster than IPCC estimates," said climatologist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Another study finds that less than a 2 degree temperature increase could trigger run-away ice sheet meltdown: http://www.physorg.com/news147001400.html