16 July 2007One World Sout Asia
This year is on track to becoming the second warmest year since temperatures began to be recorded in the 1860s, climate experts have said, adding that the current floods in Pakistan and heat waves in China and Greece may be portents of worse disruptions in store from global warming. The 10 warmest years in the past 150 have all been in the 1990s. Last year ranked number six, according to the United Nations’ International Meteorological Organisation (IMO). “2007 is looking as though it will be the second warmest behind 1998,” says Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia, which provides data to the IMO . “It isn’t far behind... it could change, but at the moment this looks unlikely,” he adds, based on temperature records up to the end of April 2007. In late 2006, Jones predicted that 2007 could surpass 1998 as the warmest year on record due to rising greenhouse gas emissions and the El Nino effect that causes warming in the Pacific. The US’ National Aeronautics and Space Agency, which uses slightly different data, places 2005 as the warmest, ahead of 1998. Almost all climate experts say that the trend is towards more drought, floods, heat waves and powerful storms. But, they say, individual extreme events are not normally a sign of global warming because weather is, by its nature, chaotic. “Severe events are going to be more frequent,” says Salvano Briceno, Director of the Geneva-based Secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. As a result of extreme events in 2007, over 500 people died in storms and floods in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India in the last week of June. Temperatures in Greece reached 46 degrees Celsius (114.80F) this week as a result of a heatwave that swept across parts of southern Europe. Parts of China have also experienced heatwave conditions in recent days, while Germany and France have witnessed flooding. Torrential rains have battered northern England and the US state of Texas, where Austin has had its wettest year on record so far. In Germany, average temperatures from May 2006-2007 smashed records for the past century, raising questions about whether climate change was quickening, said the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “If this trend continues in the near future, we will be experiencing an acceleration of global warming in Germany so far not expected by climate scientists,” it said in a statement. Briceno said the global community needed to work out better disaster preparedness and reduction strategies, warning that climate change was adding to already increasing risks faced by a rising human population of around 6.6 billion people. For instance, many people are cramming into cities or settling in plains where there is already a risk of floods. Or moving to regions vulnerable to drought. “We need to reduce all the underlying risk factors, such as by locating communities out of hazard-prone areas,” he said. “We now have a clearer picture of what is going to happen and it’s urgent that governments give this higher priority.” The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , drawing on the work of 2,500 scientists, said this year that it was “very likely” that human activities led by the use of fossil fuel were the main cause of warming in the past half-century. It gave a “best estimate” that temperatures would rise 1.8-4.0 degrees Celsius this century.
