World faces hottest year ever, as El Niño combines with global warming
The UK’s Independent says World faces hottest year ever, as El Niño combines with global warming.
As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.
The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.
Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.
Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records.
The full article has a lot more detail but the news, as usual, is fairly grim. But the bottom line is its not too late, yet, to turn the situation around. Sure we’ve made it much much harder for ourselves by leaving it until now, but the challenge of restoring the planet’s climate is, I believe, not yet beyond us.
Part of the solution is undoing the damage already done, and part of the solution is preventing new damage from occurring. — DS
Technorati Tags: climate change, El Niño, emissions reduction, global warming
