Right before the Copenhagen Climate Conference, ‘a group of scientists issued an update on the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided.’

The report’s 26 authors coming from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, the U.S., and Australia are scientists who also wrote the last IPCC report.

The report, entitled The Copenhagen Diagnosis, reveals that ‘in several key areas observed changes are outstripping the most recent projections by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and warns that “there is a very high probability of the warming exceeding 2 °C unless global emissions peak and start to decline rapidly” within the next decade.’ The report claims that ‘scientists have underestimated the pace and extent of global warming.’

The Copenhagen Diagnosis is explicitly aimed at “policy-makers, stakeholders, the media and the broader public” on the eve of the international climate talks that begin on December 7, 2009.

According to Stefan Rahmstorf, department head at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Sea level is rising much faster and Arctic sea ice cover shrinking more rapidly than we previously expected. Unfortunately, the data now show us that we have underestimated the climate crisis in the past.”

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Via environment360