As the world prepares to meet for discussions about global initiatives post-Kyoto, the science backing climate change is updating as quickly as possible. It seems that few days have gone by this fall without some agency or another releasing their data and findings on global warming, and the Copenhagen meeting couldn’t be more informed. From National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to MIT, reports detailing not only the forecasts and predictions of models, but actual observable changes in nature, are most certainly piled high on delegates’ desks.

The consensus, it seems (as outlined most recently by an update of the 2007 IPCC report), is that predictions and models have underestimated the expected impacts of climate change. Timelines are behind, as are predicted effects and their intensity.

Whereas 20 years ago, global warming was comprised mostly of models, today we can view physical realities, such as the receding glaciers in the Himalayas, the melting glaciers at the poles, and the lack of second-year ice near the poles. Research teams are out in every corner of the globe, observing and recording the changes taking place. Unfortunately, what they’re finding is that our models weren’t predicting how quickly we’d see changes to our environment.

The fact that the models aren’t keeping up with the reality of climate change creates some serious issues for the world. We need to act, as an international community, in order to deal with this pressing environmental issue.