Reaping
The Whirlwind
Independent
03 July 2003
In an astonishing announcement
on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation
signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.
In a startling report, the
WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics
at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate
occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever
June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked
them to climate change.
The unprecedented warning
takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming
from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected
UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists
will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change
are being borne out).
The Geneva-based body, to
which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view
that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable
that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.
The extreme weather it documents,
such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record
storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions
of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere
warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent
scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue
to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events
might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples.
In southern France, record
temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures
of 5C to 7C above the average.
In Switzerland, it was the
hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In
Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C,
making it the hottest June recorded.
In the United States, there
were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for
any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992.
In India, this year's pre-monsoon
heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm.
At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka,
heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions,
resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people.
The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged.
A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown
tea in the next three months.
Last month was also the hottest
in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The
WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low
temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating
the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been
gradually increasing over the past 100 years.
"New record extreme
events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years
the number of such extremes have been increasing.
"According to recent
climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United
Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over
the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C.
"New analyses of proxy
data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature
in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century
during the past 1,000 years."
While the trend towards warmer
temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since
1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period.
Global average land and sea
surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records
began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the
warmest on record.
It is possible that 2003
will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the
143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990,
with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.
The unstable world of climate
change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.