World warms again through 2000

Yet more rain and storms roll in over western Europe

By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

Just days before 2000 ends, the signs are this will prove yet another unusually warm year.

The World Meteorological Organisation said it would turn out to be the fifth or sixth warmest since 1860.

Eight of the 10 warmest years since then have occurred since 1990, with 1998, when the El Nino phenomenon was warming the Pacific, the hottest on record.

The WMO says the related El Nina is cooling the Pacific this year.

The WMO secretary-general, Dr Godwin Obasi, presenting its annual statement on the climate, said that 2000 was the 22nd successive year that global temperatures had been above the average of the 1961-1990 base period.

He said the WMO findings on temperatures were consistent with the onset of global warming, which is believed to be caused to a significant extent by rising emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.

Limiting emissions

Dr Obasi said: "The climate of 2000 represents a continuation of the global warming conditions that have persisted throughout the 1990s.

"It is consistent with a warmer planet. I think we have to take seriously curtailing the emission of greenhouse gases and this accumulation in the atmosphere.

"That is the only way that we can start addressing the issue of global warming."

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This year, the WMO says, the global average surface temperature is likely to be about 0.32 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, and 0.6 degrees C higher than temperatures a century ago.

It says 2000 has been similar to 1999, the fifth warmest year since instrumental recordings of temperature began in 1860.

The WMO statement said: "The year 2000 was much like those of the 1990s - some areas of the globe experienced extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme rainfall and extreme drought, while many others experienced near-normal conditions.

"But when averaged together the global climate continues to be warmer than normal."

WMO officials said El Nino was not expected to return to the Pacific until near the end of 2001 at the earliest.

No record-breaker

Temperatures in part of the UK which have been recorded for many years suggest that 2000 will prove another warm year, but not an exceptional one.

The Central England Temperature series records the monthly mean surface air temperature for a region representative of the English Midlands from 1659 to the present day.

The CET records show that the 1990s were nearly 0.6 degrees C warmer than the average for the years 1961-1990.

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Dr Mike Hulme is executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK.

He told BBC News Online: "This year won't be breaking any records, though with ten days to go my judgement is that it will definitely be in the top 10% of years in the full CET record.

"It may just get into the top 5%, but it won't have been as hot as 1998 or 1999.

"It looks likely to be between 0.7 and 0.9 degrees C above the average for 1961 to 1990.

"Even with the underlying warming trend of between two and four degrees C per century that we think there is now, natural climate variability means you won't set a new record every year.

"They can be surprisingly infrequent. You might get a big spike one year, then have to wait a decade or so before it's exceeded."