Wild
Weather A Taste Of
Things To Come
By Marc Kaufman
09 August,2007
Sydney
Morning Herald
A
monsoon dropped 35 centimetres of rain in one day across many parts
of South Asia this month. Germany had its wettest May on record, and
April was the driest there in a century. Temperatures reached 45 degrees
in Bulgaria last month and 32 degrees in Moscow in late May, shattering
long-time records.
The year still has almost
five months to go, but it has already experienced a range of weather
extremes that the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation says
is well outside the historical norm and is a precursor to much greater
weather variability as global warming transforms the planet.
The warming trend confirmed
in February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - based
on the finding that 11 of the past 12 years had higher average ground
temperatures than any others since formal temperature recording began
- appears to have continued with a vengeance into 2007. The meteorological
organisation reported that January and April were the warmest worldwide
ever recorded.
“Climate change projections
indicate it to be very likely that hot extremes, heatwaves and heavy
precipitation events will continue to become more frequent,” the
organisation said.
The heavy rains in South
Asia have resulted in more than 500 deaths and displaced 10 million
people, while 13.5 million Chinese have been affected by floods, the
report said. In England and Wales, the period from May to July was the
wettest since record-keeping began in 1766, resulting in floods that
killed nine and caused more than $US6billion ($7billion) in damage.
The World Meteorological
Organisation, which is co-sponsoring a series of meetings and reports
on global climate change, is putting together an early-warning system
for climate extremes and establishing long-term monitoring systems,
and plans to help countries most vulnerable to climate change.
“The average Northern
Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were
very likely the highest during any 50-year period in the last 500 years,
and likely the highest in the past 1300 years,” the report said.
Global warming is expected
to result in more extreme weather because of changes in atmospheric
wind patterns and the ability of warmer air to hold more moisture, said
Martin Manning, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
working group on the physical science of climate change. He said that
one year of heavier than normal rains and warmer than usual temperatures
said nothing definitive about climate change, but they were consistent
with the panel’s long-term predictions.
“What we have projected
is an increase in extreme events as the global temperatures rise,”
Dr Manning said. “Floods, droughts and heatwaves are certainly
consistent with that.”
The World Meteorological
Organisation reported the extreme weather occurred in many parts of
the world. In May, a series of large waves (estimated at up to 3.6 metres)
swamped almost 70 islands in 16 atolls in the Maldive Islands off south
India, causing serious flooding and extensive damage. Halfway around
the globe, Uruguay was hit during the same month by the worst flooding
since 1959 - floods that affected more than 110,000 people and severely
damaged crops and buildings. Two months later, an unusual winter brought
high winds, blizzards and rare snowfall to parts of South America.
Meanwhile, two extreme heatwaves
affected south-eastern Europe in June and July. Dozens of people died,
and firefighters worked nonstop battling blazes that destroyed thousands
of hectares. On July 23, temperatures hit the record 45 degrees in Bulgaria.
Copyright © 2007. The
Sydney Morning Herald.
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