Climate Change and the Water Ecology of the Great Lakes Workshop June 15, 2001 Center for Great Lakes Studies Great Lakes WATER Institute University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Date: June 6, 2001 Contacts: Bill Kearney, Media Relations Officer Mark Chesnek, Media Relations Assistant (202) ; FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Leading Climate Scientists Advise White House on Global Warming

WASHINGTON -- In a report requested by the Bush administration, a committee of the National Academies' National Research Council summed up science's current understanding of global climate change by characterizing the global warming trend over the last 100 years, and examining what may be in store for the 21st century and the extent to which warming may be attributable to human activity. "We know that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere, causing surface temperatures to rise. We don't know precisely how much of this rise to date is from human activities, but based on physical principles and highly sophisticated computer models, we expect the warming to continue because of greenhouse gas emissions."

Based on assumptions that emissions of greenhouse gases will accelerate and conservative assumptions about how the climate will react to that, computer models suggest that average global surface temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century. With regard to the basic question of whether climate change is occurring, the report notes that measurements show that temperatures at the Earth's surface rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century. This warming process has intensified in the past 20 years, accompanied by retreating glaciers, thinning arctic ice, rising sea levels, lengthening of the growing season in many areas, and earlier arrival of migratory birds