2010 ties 2005 for warmest year on record: US

Yahoo News 12 Jan 11;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record for global surface temperature, US government scientists said in a report on Wednesday that offered the latest data on climate change.

The Earth in 2010 experienced temperatures higher than the 20th century average for the 34th year in a row, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Overall, 2010 and 2005 were 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 Celsius) above the 20th century average when taking a combination of land and water surface temperatures across the world, it said.

Those two years were also the highest in temperature since record-keeping began in 1880.

Last year was the wettest on record, NOAA said citing Global Historical Climatology Network which made the calculation based on global average precipitation, even though regional patterns varied widely.

When it came to hurricanes and storms, the Pacific Ocean saw the fewest number of hurricanes and named storms, three and seven respectively, since the 1960s.

But the Atlantic Ocean told a different story, with 12 hurricanes and 19 named storms, which include tropical storms and depressions, marking the second highest number of hurricanes on record and third highest for storms.

The analysis also tracked weather changes that contributed to massive floods in Pakistan and a heat wave in Russia, saying an "unusually strong jet stream" from June to August was to blame.

"The jet stream remained locked in place for weeks, bringing an unprecedented two-month heat wave to Russia and contributing to devastating floods in Pakistan at the end of July," it said.

Expert Bob Ward at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science said the US data shows proof of climate change.

"These new figures show unequivocally that the Earth is warming and its temperature is at record levels," Ward said.

Last year's data "also showed that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 390 parts per million, its highest level for at least 800,000 years and almost 40 per cent higher than the level before the start of the Industrial Revolution when humans started to burn fossil fuels in increasing amounts," he said.

"The evidence is overwhelming that human activities are driving climate change."

In the United States alone, 2010 marked the 14th year in a row with higher annual average temperatures when compared to the long term average since 1895, NOAA said.

Record snowfalls at the start of the year in the northeast including Washington and Philadelphia were part of a winter pattern driven by El Nino and the Arctic Oscillation, NOAA said.

A separate report by Canada's Environment Ministry said that last year was the warmest in Canada since it began keeping meteorological records 63 years ago.

Canada's second warmest year was 1998, when temperatures were 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) higher than normal, the ministry said, adding that its records went back to 1948.

International studies published on Sunday warned that global warming could wipe out three-quarters of Europe's alpine glaciers by 2100 and hike sea levels by four meters (13 feet) by the year 3000 through melting the West Antarctic icesheet.

2010 Ties For Warmest Year, Emissions To Blame
Timothy Gardner PlanetArk 13 Jan 11;

Last year tied for the warmest since data started in 1880, capping a decade of record high temperatures that shows mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet, two U.S. agencies said.

Global surface temperatures in 2010 were 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 Celsius) above the 20th century average, tying the record set in 2005, the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Wednesday.

"These results show that the climate is continuing to show the influence of greenhouse gases. It's showing evidence of warming," David Easterling, the chief of the scientific services division at the NCDC, told reporters in a teleconference.

Many places, such as Russia and Pakistan, suffered from heat waves and floods that killed thousands, scorched crops and inundated countless farm acres. Those events, caused in part by a shifted jet stream in the atmosphere, helped lead to record global food prices and threaten to lead to food riots like those seen in 2008.

It's not possible to directly link global warming as the cause of one weather event. But the trend of rising temperatures since 2000 increases the possibility of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods, Easterling said. Every year since 2000 has ranked as one of the 15 warmest years on record, he said.

Last year was also the wettest on record and a warmer atmosphere holds more water, which in general can result in more floods, he said.

FUTURE

The report did not predict weather in the future. But the U.N. climate science panel says weather is likely to be more extreme this century because of a build up of gases released by burning fossil fuels and forest destruction.

James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said "if the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long." His office also released a report on Wednesday that said 2010 was tied for the warmest year on record with 2005.

Jay Gulledge, the senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said farmers and others can adjust to expected warmer temperatures, but preparing for extreme weather is harder. "We've got really immense potential right now to have even bigger impacts from the direct effects of extreme events," he said.

As the weather warmed, the world did not do enough to prevent future climate change, scientists said.

At U.N. climate talks in Cancun late last year nearly 200 countries agreed to set a target of limiting a rise in average world temperatures to below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) over pre-industrial times.

But promised emissions curbs by big polluters such as China and the United States are not enough to achieve that goal and tougher actions are needed, climate scientists said.

NOAA's and NASA's reports were the first of four major ones on global 2010 temperatures. The UK Met Office's Hadley Center and the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization are expected to issue reports later this month.

PARADOX

Frigid winters in parts of Europe and the United States in 2010 may be a paradoxical side effect of climate change, some scientists said. Rising temperatures mean a shrinking of sea ice in the Arctic, heating the region and pushing cold air southwards during the winter, according to a study last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Warming of the air over the Barents and Kara seas, for instance, seems to bring cold winter winds to Europe.

"This is not what one would expect," said Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study and climate scientist at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea-ice won't bother him could be wrong."

The release of the NOAA report itself was delayed one day by an unusually hard snowstorm in North Carolina.

"These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia," he said. "Recent severe winters like last year's ... do not conflict with the global warming picture, but rather supplement it."

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo; graphic by Emily Stephenson)

(Editing by Marguerita Choy and Lisa Shumaker)

2010 hit by weather extremes: Pakistan to Russia
Reuters AlertNet 12 Jan 11;

Jan 12 (Reuters) - Last year, in which extreme weather caused devastating floods in Pakistan and China and a heatwave in Russia, tied as the warmest year since records began, a U.S. government agency said on Wednesday. [ID:nN12197667].

The U.N. panel of climate change experts says that weather is likely to be more extreme in the 21st century because of a build-up of heat-trapping gases from human use of fossil fuels.

Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest since global surface records began in 1880, according to the National Climatic Data Center, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Following are examples of extreme weather in 2010.

PAKISTAN FLOODS - Pakistan had its worst flooding in its history after exceptional monsoon rains, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing more than 20 million.

RUSSIAN HEATWAVE - Russia had its most severe heatwave, with average temperatures for Moscow a scorching 7.6 degrees Celsius (14 F) above normal in July. About 11,000 excess deaths in summer were attributed to the extreme heat in Moscow alone. The heatwave caused forest fires and drought led to crop failures that contributed to drive up world food prices. Finland, Ukraine and Belarus also had extreme high temperatures at the time.

World wheat prices rose 47 percent last year, for instance, and the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization said key grain prices could rise further [ID:nLD37041BM]

AUSTRALIA FLOODS - Heavy rains made 2010 the third wettest year on record in Australia even before devastating floods in early 2011 that have killed 16 people [ID:nL3E7CC094]. Large parts of Australia and Indonesia suffered heavy rains from May 2010, linked to the La Nina event that cools the Pacific Ocean and disrupts weather patterns [ID:nL3E7CC0WS].

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HOT - Canada had its warmest year on record in 2010, with mean temperatures 3 degrees Celsius above normal. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver lacked snow.

Large parts of northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and southwest Asia also had their warmest year on record.

High temperatures included a sweltering 53.5 Celsius (128.30F) at MohenjoDaro in Pakistan, a national record and the highest temperature in Asia since at least 1942. Other highs included 52.0 degrees Celsius in Jeddah and 50.4 in Doha.

COLD - A few areas had below-average temperatures over 2010, including parts of Siberia, interior Australia, parts of the United States and Europe.

Opponents of proposed U.S. legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions seized upon blizzards in February in the eastern United States as evidence that global warming was not happening. The family of Senator James Inhofe, a Republican climate sceptic, built an igloo on Capitol Hill with a sign that said "Al Gore's new home." The bill ultimately failed, contributing to scant progress in U.N. talks towards a new climate treaty.

The winter chill in parts of Europe and the United States caused travel chaos. A thaw of Arctic sea ice, itself linked to global warming, may have driven chill air southwards, some scientists say.

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OTHER EXTREMES - Floods and landslides killed more than 1,400 people in Gansu province in China. Floods in Colombia have killed about 300 people since April, displaced 2 million and caused estimated damage of up to $5.2 billion

The Amazon basin was hit by drought and the Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary, fell to its lowest level on record.

EL NINO/LA NINA - The year started with a strong El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, a naturally occurring weather phenomenon associated with warmer than normal water. It was succeeded by a cooling La Nina event.

SEA ICE - Arctic sea ice shrank in summer to the third smallest in the satellite record, behind 2007 and 2008. Antarctic sea ice was slightly bigger than normal.

(Compiled by Alister Doyle in Oslo, extra reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington. Sources: Reuters bureaus, U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

El Nino Seen Triggering Next World Warmth Record
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 14 Jan 11;

Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest on record, according to U.S. agencies, but is likely to be overtaken soon by the next year with a strong El Nino weather event, experts said on Thursday.

A gradual build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities is heating the planet but natural events such as El Nino, which every few years warms the surface of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, can have a far bigger immediate impact.

"It will take an El Nino year to break the record, so possibly the next one," said professor Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

On Wednesday, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year since reliable data started in 1880, capping a decade of record temperatures.

Last year started with an El Nino, as did 2005 and 1998 which is rated the warmest year by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The WMO is likely to give a view of 2010's ranking in late January, after compiling temperature data that is also due from Jones' unit alongside NCDC and NASA. El Nino can disrupt world weather, with effects on everything from food to energy prices.

Knut Alfsen, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, said greenhouse gases from human activities caused the Earth to absorb more energy than it radiated into space.

"Most of that energy goes into the oceans -- so a record depends on the behavior of the oceans, typically an El Nino or La Nina event," he said.

LA NINA

A current La Nina, widely seen as a factor causing floods in Australia that have killed at least 19 people, is a natural cooling of the Pacific that mirrors El Nino.

Other natural events that affect temperatures include variations in the sun's output, shifts in ocean currents or big volcanic eruptions such as that of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, whose ash dimmed sunlight worldwide.

Jones said that warming from 1979 to 2010 had been 0.51 degree Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit), or 0.016 C a year. But annual natural swings were far bigger -- in the largest 20th century shift, 1977 was 0.29 degree C warmer than 1976.

Jones was cleared of scientific misconduct last year after hacked e-mails raised questions about the reliability of data in the "Climategate" controversy.

The U.N. panel of climate scientists said in 2007 it was at least 90 percent likely that human activities were the main cause of global warming, leaving a slim possibility that natural variations such as the sun's output may be to blame.

And the climate system is far from fully understood. A study in the Journal Science in 2010 said the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere, which also retains heat, had declined since 2000 and braked the rise caused by greenhouse gases.

Governments are far from agreement on how to solve the problem. U.N. talks in Mexico last month agreed steps such as a fund to help poor nations cope with everything from floods to rising sea levels. But a binding treaty is far off.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)