2010 set to be warmest ever year despite Europe's winter freeze
Wed 15 December 2010
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2010 is set to be the hottest year on record according to leading meteorological organisations, despite the freezing December weather in the UK and Europe. NASA recently released data which showed that November was easily the hottest in the temperature record and that the period December to November 2010 was also the hottest ever recorded. Meanwhile, a new report from leading UK climate scientists says that limiting temperature rise to a 'safe' two degrees may now be out of reach.
The 2010 temperature records are considered to be especially impressive because the World is in the middle of a strong La Niña, which would normally cool off temperatures for a few months.
There were a series of heatwaves in 2010 with record temperatures set in 17 countries including an unprecedented month-long heatwave in Russia.
Th decade 2000-2010 also proved to be the hottest on record, with temperatures averaging 0.46C above the 1961-90 average, according to a report in The Guardian (see associated link).
Figures released by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) showed global average temperatures recorded up to the end of October were higher in two of the three data sets used, both of them American. In the third data set, which is British, the figures were running equal with the previous hottest year on record, 1998.
In a report by leading climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bowes of the University of Manchester, the researchers say "There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature at below 2C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards so that 2C now represents the threshold [of] extremely dangerous climate change"
The scientists say that the 'agonisingly slow progress' of the global climate change talks makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.
The new analysis by Anderson and Bows takes account of the non-binding pledges made by countries in the Copenhagen Accord, the compromise document that emerged from the last major UN climate summit, and the slight dip in greenhouse gas emissions caused by the economic recession.
The scientists' modelling is based on actual tonnes of emissions, not percentage reductions, and separates the predicted emissions of rich and fast-industrialising nations such as China.
Anderson said (reported in The Guardian): "This paper is not intended as a message of futility, but rather a bare and perhaps brutal assessment of where our 'rose-tinted' and well-intentioned approach to climate change has brought us. Real hope and opportunity, if it is to arise at all, will do so from a raw and dispassionate assessment of the scale of the challenge faced by the global community."
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