This decade is set to be the warmest on record though 2009 won’t be the hottest year, meteorologists said today, lending fuel to both skeptics and supporters of a global warming agreement being negotiated in Copenhagen.
Data from the U.K. Met Office and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization show this year will be the fifth- warmest, with 1998 holding the record. The global average temperature in 2009 was 0.44 degrees Celsius above the 1961 through 1990 average temperature of 14 degrees (57 degrees Fahrenheit), the WMO said today in the Danish capital.
“This tells us that global warming is still rising,” Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said in a telephone interview in Copenhagen, where two weeks of United Nations talks began yesterday to draft a climate deal. “Greenhouse gases continue to increase, and it’s clearly important we reach an agreement in Copenhagen to reduce them.”
Delegates in Copenhagen aim to reach an agreement to reduce output of the greenhouse gases that the UN in 2007 said was “very likely” the main cause of “unequivocal” global warming. The warmest year in the Met Office series, one of three used by the UN, is 1998.
Critics of climate forecasting have seized on the fact that the warmest year occurred 11 years ago, saying that natural factors such as volcanic ash, changing ocean currents and the variable intensity of sun rays are more significant factors that heat-trapping emissions from power plants and factories.
The failure of temperatures to rise above 1998 levels while emissions of carbon dioxide have gone up is an indication the gas is just “one factor out of hundreds” that determine the Earth’s temperature, according to former U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff member Marc Morano.
‘Natural Variability’
“You can’t distinguish rising CO2 from natural variability,” Morano said in a telephone interview from Washington. “To sit there and say that CO2 is the sole driving factor as Al Gore and many others have tried to do is no longer scientifically tenable.”
The warmest year remains 1998, according to the data series. That’s because that year had a strong El Nino, a periodic warming of equatorial waters in the eastern Pacific that affects the world climate, Pope said. Nine years from the past decade follow 1998 on the list, and the Met Office said it expected temperatures to keep rising as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
“We would expect roughly half the years from 2010 to 2020 to be warmer than 1998,” said Pope. She said given the current rising emissions trend, “it’s very challenging to constrain temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius,” a key goal for the 27- nation European Union and other major emitters including the U.S., China and India.
Data from the U.K. Met Office and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization show this year will be the fifth- warmest, with 1998 holding the record. The global average temperature in 2009 was 0.44 degrees Celsius above the 1961 through 1990 average temperature of 14 degrees (57 degrees Fahrenheit), the WMO said today in the Danish capital.
“This tells us that global warming is still rising,” Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said in a telephone interview in Copenhagen, where two weeks of United Nations talks began yesterday to draft a climate deal. “Greenhouse gases continue to increase, and it’s clearly important we reach an agreement in Copenhagen to reduce them.”
Delegates in Copenhagen aim to reach an agreement to reduce output of the greenhouse gases that the UN in 2007 said was “very likely” the main cause of “unequivocal” global warming. The warmest year in the Met Office series, one of three used by the UN, is 1998.
Critics of climate forecasting have seized on the fact that the warmest year occurred 11 years ago, saying that natural factors such as volcanic ash, changing ocean currents and the variable intensity of sun rays are more significant factors that heat-trapping emissions from power plants and factories.
The failure of temperatures to rise above 1998 levels while emissions of carbon dioxide have gone up is an indication the gas is just “one factor out of hundreds” that determine the Earth’s temperature, according to former U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff member Marc Morano.
‘Natural Variability’
“You can’t distinguish rising CO2 from natural variability,” Morano said in a telephone interview from Washington. “To sit there and say that CO2 is the sole driving factor as Al Gore and many others have tried to do is no longer scientifically tenable.”
The warmest year remains 1998, according to the data series. That’s because that year had a strong El Nino, a periodic warming of equatorial waters in the eastern Pacific that affects the world climate, Pope said. Nine years from the past decade follow 1998 on the list, and the Met Office said it expected temperatures to keep rising as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
“We would expect roughly half the years from 2010 to 2020 to be warmer than 1998,” said Pope. She said given the current rising emissions trend, “it’s very challenging to constrain temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius,” a key goal for the 27- nation European Union and other major emitters including the U.S., China and India.
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