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CSIRO MEDIA RELEASE 95/93

WATERWORLD THE MOVIE- IS IT POSSIBLE?

While the critics deliberate - and distributors hold their breath for a box office rush to Hollywood's big budget creation, Waterworld, which opens nationally today - the people down at the Division of Oceanography in Hobart are also waiting with bated breath to see what the future holds.

The movie's central theme is life on water (not earth) after the melting of the icy North and South Poles. Of course, scientists know that even if the poles did melt, sea-level would rise by about 80m only, and would not cover all the land.

Waterworld is fiction. However, the CSIRO Division of Oceanography and other national and international research institutions are undertaking collaborative, globally important research to understand global warming and the consequent rise in sea level.

Climate change as a result of an enhanced greenhouse effect is caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. Climate change potentially has enormous economic and trade implications for Australia.

The Division of Oceanography is one of the key players in the National Greenhouse Research Program and the World Ocean Circulation Experiment of the World Climate Research Program.

Scientists have assessed that -

• A natural greenhouse effect keeps the present average surface temperature of the earth at about 15C degrees, which is some tens of degrees warmer than would be expected if there were no greenhouse gases;

• There has been an increase in global average surface temperature of between 0.3 and 0.6C degrees in the past 100 years and a rise in sea level of between 10-20 cm over the past 100 years. These changes cannot be unequivocally attributed to the enhanced greenhouse effect;

• The projected increases in temperature could lead to an average rise in global sea level of from 0.2 to 0.8 metres between now and the 22nd Century;

• Greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere;

• The impact of climate change on economic activities such as agriculture and forestry and on water resources may be beneficial or detrimental to a particular region, depending on regional sensitivity; and

• Observations of past climates show that major variations have occurred during the earth's history, with natural fluctuations in polar surface temperatures of the order of 5-10C degrees during the last several hundred thousand years.

No doubt during the next few weeks oceanographers who simulate their ocean world on powerful computers, will become seasoned film reviewers of the Kevin Costner classic.

For further information please call:

One inch video of Waterworld segments and audio tape available on request from:

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