24 September 2009: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a report entitled “Climate Change Science Compendium 2009.” The report, compiled in association with scientists around the world, reviews some 400 major scientific contributions to our understanding of Earth Systems and climate change that have been released through peer-reviewed literature, or from research institutions, over the last three years.

According to the Compendium, the pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The analysis of the latest, peer-reviewed science indicates that many predictions at the upper end of the IPCC’s forecasts are becoming ever more likely. Researchers are particularly concerned about, inter alia: ocean acidification linked with the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater and the impact on shellfish and coral reefs; losses from glaciers and ice-sheets; and losses of tropical and temperate mountain glaciers affecting perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the human population in terms of drinking water, irrigation and hydro-power. [UNEP press release] [Climate Change Compendium 2009]