2006 : Hottest Year Ever

Global warming causing war in Darfur...

Water find 'may end Darfur war'
Wednesday, 18 July 2007, A huge underground lake is found in Sudan's arid Darfur region, scientists say, which could help end the conflict

Some 1,000 wells will be drilled in the region, with the agreement of Sudan's government, the Boston University researchers say. Analysts say competition for resources between Darfur's Arab nomads and black African farmers is behind the conflict.

More than 200,000 Darfuris have died and 2m fled their homes since 2003. "Much of the unrest in Darfur and the misery is due to water shortages," said geologist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing, according to the AP news agency.

"Access to fresh water is essential for refugee survival, will help the peace process, and provides the necessary resources for the much needed economic development in Darfur," he said.

'Significant'

Glaciers contribute the most toward sea level rise...

Melting glaciers biggest threat to sea level
July 20, 2007 - CONTRARY to common belief, melting glaciers due to global warming contribute more to the rising sea level than melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, researchers have said.

Scientists found that the ebb and flow of glaciers where they meet the water causes them to speed up and deliver more ice into the world's oceans than previously estimated, said the study published in Science's latest issue. Glaciers and ice caps account for 60 percent of the meltwater that flows into the oceans, which has been speeding up over the past 10 years from global warming, said the study's chief author, emeritus professor Mark Meier of University of Colorado's Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Together, glaciers and ice caps drop into the oceans 417 cubic kilometres of ice each year, equal to the volume of Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes of the United States. And the volume of ice grows by 12.5 cubic kilometres each year. By comparison, the study said, ice breaking off and melting from Greenland's ice sheet contributes 28 per cent of the world's ice to the oceans, and the Antarctic ice sheet another 12 per cent.

The accelerating contribution of glaciers and ice caps is due in part to rapid changes in the flow of tidewater glaciers that discharge icebergs directly into the ocean, the researchers said. When the glacier with its "toe in the water'' thins, they said, a larger fraction of its weight is supported by water and it slides faster and sends more ice into the ocean.

More Melting glaciers biggest threat to sea level | NEWS.com.au

Sweltering in Europe...

Central and Southern Europe Sizzling
Jul 20, 2007 -- A heat wave sweeping central and southeastern Europe killed at least 13 people this week, with soaring temperatures sparking forest fires, damaging crops and prompting calls to ban horse-drawn tourist carriages.

In Romania, where temperatures reached 104 degrees Friday, the Health Ministry said at least nine people had died since Monday due to heat. In Austria, where highs had hovered around 95 degrees for days, the Health Ministry said three deaths Thursday were likely heat-related. Austrian media said at least five people had died from the heat, including an elderly woman who collapsed on a Vienna street Friday.

A 56-year-old woman collapsed and died in Zagreb, Croatia, of what doctors believed was a heat-related heart attack. Temperatures in the Balkan country reached about 104 Friday. Elsewhere, authorities in Slovakia and Hungary distributed free water in some cities. In the eastern Hungarian town of Kiskunhalas, temperatures reached a record 107.4, according to the national weather center.

Greece's Fire Service reported 115 fires Thursday, and firefighters struggled Friday to contain a blaze at an old army base near Athens, where temperatures reached 105.8. France, not affected by the heat wave, sent some firefighting planes to Greece to help out. Heat also sparked forest fires in parts of Italy, Romania and Bulgaria, where a state of emergency was declared in the southern districts of Haskovo and Stara Zagora. Strong winds and high temperatures complicated efforts to contain the blazes and Bulgarian authorities called on army and police units for help. The extreme heat and lack of rain was also a concern for farmers.

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Sweltering in Asia too...

Temperature is rising; hitting new summer highs
Saturday, July 21, 2007 - The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) yesterday recorded a high of 37.7 degrees Celsius -- the hottest temperature so far this summer.

The mercury soared in Taipei City to reach the record-high at 2:08 p.m., making this July 20 the ninth hottest day in the capital city's history. According to the CWB, Taipei's highest historic temperature for July was 38.6 C, recorded in 1921. The northern port city of Keelung also surpassed 37 degrees Celsius around noon, the CWB reported. Other Taiwan areas had milder temperatures ranging between 33 degrees Celsius and 35 degrees Celsius due to the effects of a high-pressure front from the Pacific Ocean.

While the front is expected to stabilize the weather in most of the island by lowering the possibility of rain, central and southern mountainous areas will still see sporadic rain and thunderstorms, said the CWB. Temperatures in the northern area of the island will remain high between 27 to 37 degrees Celsius today and gradually decrease starting tomorrow and until next Friday to range between 26 to 35 degrees Celsius. Intermittent showers and thunderstorms are expected to start Tuesday and continue until Friday in northern and central parts of the island.

Central and southern areas will also experience high temperatures of 27 to 35 degrees Celsius today and tomorrow. Central temperatures will stay within the 26 to 35 degrees Celsius range during the work week. Temperatures in the south are expected to decrease by Tuesday to between 27 and 34 degrees Celsius, and remain at that range for the rest of the work week, according to the CWB. Due to the elevated temperatures, the CWB advised the public to wear sun screen and take the necessary precautions to avoid heat strokes.

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Hot time in Tibet...

Tibet - fastest warming country
Sunday 22nd July, 2007: Chinese scientists have revealed that Tibet is warming up faster than anywhere else in the world, at a rate of 0.3 degrees Celcius every ten years.

They are warning that rising temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Asian rivers and trigger more droughts, sandstorms and deserts. Tibet, with its glaciers and high altitude, is highly sensitive to warming, especially in the western region.

Currently, China's average temperature is rising at 0.4C every 100 years, and it is rapidly overtaking the United States to become the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases. China is under rising international pressure to accept mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions from its factories and vehicles.

Tibet - fastest warming country

And its rain-in' all over the world...

"Once-In-A-Century" Floods Swamp China
July 23, 2007: Scores Killed, 300,000 Evacuated As Punishing Rainy Season Drones On

China's president visited a flood-battered southern city on Sunday, expressing condolences and vowing to help the thousands affected as the death toll from rain-triggered floods, landslides and mud flows across the nation rose to 152 from this week alone. Since the start of the annual rainy season in May, floods have hit nearly half of China's regions and killed at least 400 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

In the southwestern city of Chongqing, 42 people died and 12 have been reported missing. Another 300,000 people have been evacuated. China Central Television's Sunday night news broadcast showed President Hu Jintao slogging through Chonqqing's flooded streets in black galoshes and visiting with city residents whose homes had been inundated.

Hu was shown chatting with an elderly man living in a washed out apartment, asking, "How high was the water? Are you having any problems getting enough food? Do you have all the things you need to cook your rice?" During a speech in the city's flooded Shapingba district, Hu told residents that the Communist Party and government were concerned about their welfare and would do everything possible to care for them.

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Scientists: Rain Proves Climate Warming
July 23, 2007 - Scientists say they have first proof that warming is changing rainfall.

It's been raining, unusually hard, in several parts of the world--England, China, India, and parts of the U.S.--and, quite by coincidence, there is a paper coming in this Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, reporting that, "for the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the last century."

That phrase comes from the lead authors at Environment Canada, who worked with other scientists in Britain, Japan and the U.S. They compared rainfall patterns since 1925 with the changes that fourteen different computer models of the climate said ought to have happened, and found that in large parts of the world, they match pretty well.

"We show," they write in the Nature paper, "that anthropogenic forcing [i.e., changes caused by human activity] has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands, and that these changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing." They found much of the Northern Hemisphere and the southern tropics getting wetter over time, and some tropical regions just north of the Equator--notably the Sahel region in Africa--getting drier.

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Unbearable heat in Hungary...

Hungary heatwave kills hundreds
Tuesday, 24 July 2007, Up to 500 people in Hungary have died in a heatwave in the past week, a top health official says.

Anna Paldy, deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health, told the BBC that the figure included 230 deaths in central Hungary. The deaths - from 15 to 22 July - were caused by heatstroke, cardiovascular problems and other illnesses aggravated by the heat, she said.

Some 30 people have also died in the heatwave in neighbouring Romania. Ms Paldy told the BBC News website that the death rate from heat in Hungary was the highest in recent years. The daily mean temperature in the past week had reached 30C, she said.

In the southern city of Kiskunhalas, the temperature reached a record high of 41.9C. The data came from hospitals and doctors in Budapest and the county of Pest, which the researchers then extrapolated for the whole country. Most of the deaths were among elderly people.

Regional woes

Gettin' hotter in Nevada too...

Nevada Has Big Temperature Gains
Jul 25, 2007 -- Nevada is among the states with the most dramatic increase in average temperatures the last 30 years, according to a new study that examines the impact of global warming across the country.

The average temperature in Reno from June through August last year was 75.6 degrees, almost 7 degrees above the 30-year average, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group reported. The gap was the biggest measured nationally. Las Vegas' average temperature last summer was 3.6 degrees above the 30-year average from 1971-2000, while Elko's was 4 degrees above normal and Ely's was 2.1 degrees hotter, the report said.

"The scientific evidence of global warming is incontrovertible, and Nevada is feeling the heat more intensely than most of the rest of the U.S," said Stephen M. Rowland, Professor of Geology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "Only a tiny bit of this increase in temperature can be attributed to increased urbanization the so-called urban heat-island effect," Rowland continued. "Global warming is here, and we better get serious about confronting it."

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the 2006 summer and 2006 overall were the second warmest on record for the lower 48 states. And 2007 is on track to be the second warmest year on record globally. "Global warming is rewriting the record books in Nevada and across the country," said Jill Bunting, a spokesperson for U.S. PIRG. "Unless our elected officials act now to curb global warming pollution, Nevada will see more severe heat waves that increase the risk for wildfires, drought, and heat-related illnesses," she said.

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Glaciers melting in China...

Warming of glaciers threatens millions in China
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 -- More than 3 miles above sea level in these jagged, wind-scoured mountains, there's little doubt that global warming is endangering China's future.

The glaciers that ripple off the peaks of Anyemaqen, a mountain range in the western China province of Qinghai, are shrinking rapidly, endangering hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters flowing eastward through the Yellow River. With the rest of the country punished by record heat waves, floods and droughts this summer, it's no wonder that Beijing, which has long viewed global warming as a problem that rich nations should solve, is waking up to the fact that China may be especially at risk.

Qinghai, a poor, Texas-size stretch of the northern Tibetan plateau where yaks outnumber humans, became the unusual focus of attention when U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson visited there Monday at the start of a four-day trip to China. Rather than climbing the peaks, he visited Qinghai Lake, a saltwater body about 200 miles away, to demonstrate U.S. concern for the effects of global warming.

"What's happening in terms of climate change globally is impacting the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and what's happening here also impacts the global environment," Paulson said, according to news reports. Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China in recent weeks have reached nearly 700, state media reported this week, and officials warned that global warming is likely to cause even more violent weather.

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Getting warmer in Europe too...

Europe heating up quicker than thought
August 04, 2007 - WESTERN Europe has heated up more than previously thought over the past century, according to a new study that adds to evidence pointing to a future of hotter summers and longer-lasting heatwaves.

The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, showed that the actual mean temperature since 1880 had risen 1.6C, not the 1.3C as previously thought, said Paul Della-Marta, a climate scientist at Switzerland's national weather service who led the study. “It is a big change when you consider it is an average temperature,” Mr Della-Marta said.

The reason why previous estimates were too low was because before 1930 most temperatures were measured without the type of screens now in use that block radiation from the sun and ground that can skew a reading, he said. The study's findings may provide further evidence that heatwaves like the one that killed dozens this summer in Europe were a sign of global warming.

“It could be used as more evidence that temperatures are rising and we may be underestimating impacts of human activity,” he said. Weather forecasters may also use the new data to help build climate models to help better predict the impact rising temperatures will have, Mr Della-Marta added.

More Europe heating up quicker than thought | NEWS.com.au

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Climate change getting dangerous...

WMO says world weather marked by record extremes in 2007
Aug. 7, 2007 -- Weather and climate have been marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

Those extreme weather conditions included unusual flooding in Asia, heatwaves and heavy rains in Europe and snowfall in South Africa and South America, the UN weather agency said in a statement. In January and April it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89 degrees Celsius warmer than average for January and 1.37 degrees Celsius warmer than average for April, the agency said.

"The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," WMO scientist Omar Baddour told reporters in Geneva. Baddour said the extreme weather conditions in 2007 had largely been predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There has been an increasing trend in the extreme events observed during the last 50 years, particularly heavy precipitation events, hot days, hot nights and heat waves, according to a joint assessment report released by the WMO and IPCC. The IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent. 　

WMO says world weather marked by record extremes in 2007