Yahoo News 23 Nov 09;
GENEVA (AFP) – Greenhouse gas emissions have kept increasing, reaching a record level since the pre-industrial era, the UN climate agency warned Monday, just weeks before a crucial climate change summit.
"Levels of most greenhouse gases continue to increase," said the World Meteorological Organisation in a statement.
"In 2008, global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are the main long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, have reached the highest levels recorded since pre-industrial times," it said.
WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud noted that data confirmed the "tendancy of exponential increase."
"It's not really good news: concentration of greenhouse gases continue to increase, actually even a bit faster," he said.
"This is reinforcing the fact that we are actually closer to the pessimistic scenario" forecasted by scientists of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he said.
"Action must be taken as soon as possible," he stressed, ahead of a UN summit in Copenhagen next month aimed at securing a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which aims at cutting carbon emissions.
The WMO said since 1750, atmospheric carbon dioxide -- the key driver of global warming -- has increased by 38 percent, contributing to 63.5 percent of the growth in atmospheric greenhouse effect.
In 2008, carbon dioxide levels reached 385.2 parts per million, up 2.0 ppm from a year earlier.
Methane levels stayed stable from 1999 to 2006, but showed a "significant increase" in 2007 and 2008.
Methane is over 20 times more efficient than carbon dioxide in trapping solar heat, and some 60 percent of methane arise from human influence on nature, such as rice and cattle farming, fossil fuel usage and landfills.
Meanwhile, the WMO noted that the levels of chlorofluorocarbons are decreasing as the ozone-depleting compounds are being phased out through an international treaty.
However, concentrations of substitute gases are "increasing rapidly," contributing to 8.9 percent of greenhouse effect between 2003 and 2008.
Arctic Ice Volume Lowest Ever As Globe Warms: U.N.
Robert Evans, PlanetArk 23 Nov 09;
GENEVA - Ice volume around the Arctic region hit the lowest level ever recorded this year as climate extremes brought death and devastation to many parts of the world, the U.N. weather agency WMO said on Tuesday.
Although the world's average temperature in 2008 was, at 14.3 degrees Celsius (57.7 degrees Fahrenheit), by a fraction of a degree the coolest so far this century, the direction toward a warmer climate remained steady, it reported.
"What is happening in the Arctic is one of the key indicators of global warming," Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said. "The overall trend is still upwards."
A report presented by Jarraud at a news conference showed Arctic ice cover dropping to its second lowest extent during this year's melt season since satellite measuring began in 1979.
However, the Geneva-based agency said, "because ice was thinner in 2008, overall ice volume was less than in any other year." It added: "The season strongly reinforced the 30-year downward trend in the extent of Arctic Sea ice."
The dramatic collapse of a quarter of ancient ice shelves on Canada's Ellesmere Island in the north of the Arctic Ocean added to earlier meltdowns, reducing cover in the region from 9,000 square km (3,500 sq miles) a century ago to just 1,000 sq kms.
The WMO said the slight slowdown in warming this year, an increase of 0.31C over the 14C of the base period 1961-90, against an average 0.43C for 2001-2007, was due to a moderate-to-strong La Nina in the Pacific in late 2007.
"This decade is almost 0.2 degrees (Celsius) warmer compared to the previous decade. We have to look at it in that way, comparing decades not years," Peter Stott, a climate scientist at Britain's Hadley Center, which provided data for the WMO report, told Reuters in London.
LA NINA, EL NINO
La Nina is a periodic weather pattern that develops when Pacific sea water cools. It alternates irregularly with the related El Nino -- when the Pacific warms up -- and both affect the climate all round the world.
The WMO report was based on statistics and analyses compiled by weather services among its 188 member countries and specialist research institutions, including government-backed bodies in the United States and Britain.
"Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe and persistent droughts, snow storms, heat waves and cold waves were recorded in many parts of the world," the agency said. In many of these, hundreds or even thousands of people died.
Among the disasters was Cyclone Nargis, which killed some 78,000 in Myanmar's southern delta region in early May. In the western Atlantic and Caribbean there were 16 major tropical storms, eight of which developed into hurricanes.
In an average year, there are 11 storms of which six become hurricanes and two become major hurricanes. In 2008, five major hurricanes developed, and for the first time on record six tropical storms in a row made landfall in the United States.
The WMO says the 10 hottest years since global records were first kept in 1850 have all been since 1997, with the warmest at 14.79 C in 2005. Countries have been struggling for years to reach agreement on how to halt the trend.
This month a two-week meeting of leaders in Poznan, Poland, called to prepare a treaty for late 2009 seemed to falter amid rows between rich and poor nations and what some climate campaigners say was lack of will to get things done.
-- Additional reporting by Gerard Wynn and Michael Szabo in London
(Editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Michael Roddy)
