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TechnoratiWorld Warming Despite Cool Pacific and Baghdad Snow
OSLO - Climate change is still nudging up temperatures in the long term even though the warmest year was back in 1998 and 2008 has begun with unusual weather such as a cool Pacific and Baghdad's first snow in memory, experts said."Global warming has not stopped," said Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) climate program.
Last year was among the six warmest years since records began in the 1850s and the British Met Office said last week that 2008 will be the coolest year since 2000, partly because of a La Nina event that cuts water temperatures in the Pacific.
"We are in a minor La Nina period which shows a little cooling in the Pacific Ocean," Delju told Reuters. "The decade from 1998 to 2007 is the warmest on record and the whole trend is still continuing."
This year has started with odd weather including the first snows in Baghdad in memory on Friday and a New Year cold snap in India that killed more than 20 people. Frost hit some areas of Florida last week but orange groves escaped mostly unscathed.
Iraqis welcomed snow as an omen of peace. "It's the first time we've seen snow in Baghdad," said 60-year-old Hassan Zahar. "I looked at the faces of all the people, they were astonished."
Last year, parts of the northern hemisphere were having a record mild winter with even Alpine ski resorts starved of snow.
Delju said climate change, blamed mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, would bring bigger swings in the weather alongside a warming trend that will mean more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.
"The more frequent occurrence of extreme events all over the world -- floods in Australia, heavy snowfall in the Middle East -- can also be signs of warming," he said.
"UNEQUIVOCAL" WARMING
The U.N. Climate Panel said last year that global warming was "unequivocal." It said temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 Fahrenheit) in the 20th century and could rise by a "best guess" of another 1.8 to 4.0C (3.2 to 7.2F) by 2100.
The record year for world temperatures was 1998, ahead of 2005, according to WMO data. Among recent signs of the effects of warming, Arctic sea ice shrank last year to a record low.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.
"One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
He added that skeptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash," he said.
Delju said temperatures would have to be flat for several more years before a lack of new record years became significant.
He noted 2005 was the second hottest year and that 1998 was boosted by a strong El Nino event which can raise temperatures worldwide in the opposite of the La Nina cooling.
Underscoring an underlying rise in temperatures, British forecaster Phil Jones said 2001-07, with an average of 0.44 Celsius above the 1961-90 world average of 14 degrees, was 0.21 degree warmer than the corresponding values for 1991-2000.
© 2008 Reuters
20 Comments so far
Show AllNIETZSCHE -- I hope we only have a re-glaciation period, as I understand that's like going "home".
Planet snowball is absolutely a human death sentence, as I recall that the temperature drops to something like - 40 C, across the entire planet, with the oceans frozen to several miles deep.
You are missing the point felix. I'm talking about survival. I mention art only in reference to what a surviving hominid might do with time on his hands.
Humans thrived during the last ice age nspire---as hunter-gatherers. We humans are not going to die, only our institutions. Fewer of us to be sure, with lives that are nasty, brutish, and short, but still alive---without the capacity to torture the planet.
FELIX4321 -- You want irony, flashing between hot and cold ?
After the snowball Earth III occurs, the best of any slim hope left for any possibly surviving humans, will a cataclysmic caldera type eruption of several thousand cubic km of ejecta (larger than TOBA, of 75,000 yr ago, that killed off 99.99% of humankind).
Actually, during snowball earth III, it is expected that the only surviving life will be fungal slime molds oozing deep into the rocky depths, so if the irony occurs in a forest w/o humans (or trees either), is it still funny?
Actually Nietzsche one of human culture's responses to the onset of unpredictable and harsh weather systems is to increase waste behavior (a.k.a. superfluous traits--like art). It is a common misconception that agricultural surplus allows for the arts and grand architecture (e.g., Mesopotamia). But the archaeological record falsifies that hypothesis. The age of the grand architecture and art in Mesopotamia correlate w/ the onset of unpredictable weather and extreme flooding, etc., not the abundance of resources provided by agriculture. Things become much more plain Jane after the weather and environment settle down. Google waste behavior and/or waste hypothesis. Or look at the work done by Dr. Robert C. Dunnell and his students.
The irony of global warming is that it will trigger the next ice age. The Pentagon did an in depth and rather informative study looking at the effects of the increase in the Earths temperature and found that in all likelihood it would end w/ the advance of a glacial period in less than a decade from the onset. We might be seeing the beginnings of this process. Moreover, the Holocene Epoch is really just an interglacial period, which typically last ~10,000 years. Oh yeah, its been 11,000 plus so we are more than due for a big freeze. So bundle up and kiss the NFL, MSM, and all the rest of the bogus distractions goodbye.
KEM -- And similarly, as told in Asimov's "Nightfall", when the power plants shut down and the lights go out, the very structure of civilization will be burned to the ground, as a source of both light and comic relief
NSPIRE, during the last depression, when the banks forced people from their homes in Detroit. They used them for firewood. Lots of nice looking homes were gutted.
We'll know that we're dirt poor, when we start tearing those buildings down, just to grow crops again
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
In the US, global warming trends are working in collusion with other problems: urban sprawl and malls destroying rich crop lands, rapid population growth in desert areas, and the continuous crumbling of our mass transportation system.
In CA and FL, I've observed dark, rich soil -and the trees that protect it- getting covered with and suffocated by cement, tar, flim-flam housing units and big box stores.
It breaks my heart.
1934 was the warmest year.
ezeflyer January 11th, 2008 1:37 pm
"Has any candidate mentioned global warming?"
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The Dems do regularly on the stump. McCain does.
BUT NOT the Mainstream Press:
Study: Of Over 2,000 Sunday Talk Show Questions to Candidates, Only Three on Global Warming
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/10/study_of_over_2_000_sunday
Some people consider 2007 even warmer than 1998. I guess it depends on the data you use. The arctic ice melt was certainly the most dramatic ever.
1998 was also about the time of the last solar maximum while 2007 wasn't far from the minimum. Watch out for an El Nino/ solar maximum/global warming year in 2009-2010. Could be pretty hot.
The latest tactic from Denier Central (eg in a recent article in the Washington Times by David Deming) has been to pretend that the series of incidents of cold weather in different parts of the world are somehow evidence against global warming. This mind you from the same people who strenuously oppose any suggestions that record high temperatures and storms are evidence FOR global warming! It would be best to ignore this tactic, except that politicians will no doubt use it to delay action. So I guess we keep opposing (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/) this stuff wherever it rears its ugly head, and point out that global warming involves not just a steady increase in warmth but, by the very nature of the climate system, extra heat increaeses instability and the chances of extreme events in all directions. Also worth noting that the graph of climate change is never smooth and that 1998 is just an extreme up in the sequence of ups and downs on a graph that is undoubtedly heading up as an overall tendency. Deniers seem congenitally unable to read graphs that are more complex than a straight line joining two points, and clearly never got as far as the concept of regression lines in maths classes.
Global warming can bring on climate change. That can mean more of everything, less of some things or unusual patters. We are messing with the atmosphere and we are not sure of the consequences. Since it is the only one we have and we do not know how to repair it once we mess it up, we should be more cautious.
Yes, time will tell, but if we meet this challenge with some such nonsense as "the war on global warming" I suspect we will get comparable results to the war on drugs, poverty, etc.
The technology is available, but not the will, and if you doubt our stupidity consider the candidates for president.
Nietzsche - no doubt what you say is reasonable....BUT, the capability exists if it is chosen and implemented to overcome the challenges that we will all face as the climate becomes more erratic (more likely sooner rather than later). Its just, it has never been done before (at least globally), so many think it can't be done. Time will tell.
I choose not to be fatalistic.
Peace,
Ken
It is no accident that human culture began only as the ice age was ending. No agricultural surplus means no resources left over for art, civilization, or war either for that matter.
When seasons again become unpredictable and therefore food production erratic, all this STUFF you see around you will come down around your ears.
It has started already.
Snow in Baghdad - what a sight it must have been....and perhaps even a temporary moment of joy for innocent citizens upon whom the US of A has unleashed so much suffering all in the name of "democracy".
The vitally necessary actions regarding climate change seem to be an unpopular and uncomfortable topic for serious discussion amongst the candidates. I guess their handlers feel it would be inadvisable. Just another example of how worthless the federal government has made itself.
At the Bali talks, it was agreed to develop a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. Seems to me that the 2009 agreement will be "make or break" and there is much work and planning to be done between now and then.
If the "forces that be" continue to hold onto trying to maintain "business as usual", or choose to downplay the urgency, then I'd say failure is assured. "Business as usual" in almost all ways of human interaction and day-to-day behavior is what needs to change. Obviously, this is no small effort, but nor is it an impossibility. As others have stated, it ought be viewed as no different than the effort put forth during World War 2, only this time, instead of fighting other nations, People from all over the world would work together collectively to achieve sustainablity. What a precedent that would set for a brighter future, but the politicos seem unable to deal with what really matters and would rather focus on the fluff such as whether hillary's tears won her more votes.
Has any candidate mentioned global warming?
I think we're pretty clear at this point, that global warming is a real thing, heavily tied to our human interactions, and that the effects of global warming are not just characterized by warm temperatures, but in the short term; erratic weather patterns, and shifts of air currents as a result of the changing climate. Just because there are record lows, does not mean there is any sort of cooling going on, just as because winter came in 1995, and '96 and '97-'07 does not mean there was a cooling effect. Do you check to see if the stove is hot by testing the floor in the neighbor's living room? Not that effective.
Thunderstorms in the midwest united states in january might tip you off to something being amiss, as meteorology and environmental sciences are concerned.