2006 : Hottest Year Ever

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Tornado in New York?

N.Y. twister spawns talk of warming
Aug 10, 2007 - Single event can't be tied to warming, but experts see a trend

Flooded subways? A tornado in Brooklyn? It was tempting to blame it all on global warming. Plenty of public officials were doing just that in the aftermath of a short but violent thunderstorm that paralyzed the nation's largest mass transit network and tore the roofs off limestone townhouses. But in reality, it is not quite that simple, weather and climate experts say.

The storm, which gathered strength over Pennsylvania, drenched New Jersey and then pounded the city at sunrise Wednesday was strong but not particularly rare for a hot summer day, said Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University.

Climate scientist James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, agreed: "You cannot blame a single specific event, such as this week's storm, on climate change," he said. "However," he added, "it is fair to ask whether the human changes have altered the likelihood of such events. There the answer seems to be 'yes.'"

More fuel around

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Extreme weather becoming more frequent
August 10, 2007 - MASSIVE floods, blistering heat waves and bizarre cold snaps since the start of the year may not be the result of climate change, but extreme weather has become more frequent, some scientists say.

The UN's World Meteorological Organisation has reported on findings that "there is an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years". "Weather and climate are marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007," it said.

Examples are not hard to find. The death toll from the worst monsoon floods to hit South Asia in decades passed 2000 on yesterday while Britain's recent floods were the country's worst for 60 years.

Southern Europe has dealt with record temperatures this summer in a brutal heat wave, South Africa has seen unusually heavy snowfall and the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires got snow for the first time in 89 years. Cyclone Gonu, the first documented tropical cyclone in the Arabian Sea, hit Oman and Iran in June, causing 50 deaths.

More Extreme weather becoming more frequent | NEWS.com.au

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A bald Greenland = an underwater Florida...

Greenland Ice Cap melt would inundate world's coast
Thursday 16th August, 2007 The meltdown of the Greenland ice cap within the next 300 years will raise global sea levels by 22 feet, enough to inundate most of the world's coastal regions, according to a new study by a researcher from the University East Anglia, England.

It was previously thought that a total meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet would occur at least 1,000 years later. However, Dr Tim Lenton believes the risks are far greater. He says the world is close to being committed to a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, although he doesn't believe a tipping point has yet been reached.

A remnant of the last Ice Age, Greenland's ice cap is nearly two miles high, but if the climate change crisis were to reach the point of no return and the ice sheet were to melt, then global sea levels would rise by 22 feet and swallow up most of the world's coastal regions. Dr Lenton's group at the University East Anglia also identified eight other environmental tipping points that could occur this century. These include a collapse of the thermohaline circulation, which is the name given to a global system of ocean currents.

Besides shutting down the Gulf Stream, this could also switch off the Asian monsoon and warm the Southern Ocean, perhaps destabilising the West Antarctica ice sheet. Also, global warming could cause a near-permanent El Nino in the Pacific, which would also hasten runaway fires in the Amazon rainforest and its disappearance by the middle of the century.

Greenland Ice Cap melt would inundate world\'s coast

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Global warming increasing storms...

Twin Storms Hit Atlantic, Pacific Coasts
Sep 5, 2007 - It's the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms hit shore in the same season.

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"Today hurricanes are becoming increasingly violent. For example, water from the Carribean, the ocean, is two degrees hotter than before," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday, siding with those who blame climate-change. "This makes steam rise off the ocean more quickly: Hurricanes form faster and are more violent."

Dr. Chris Landsea, science operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, agreed that global warming is a factor but a very small one. "All of the studies suggest that by the end of this century, hurricanes may become stronger by five percent because of global warming. So a 100-miles-per-hour hurricane would be 105 miles per hour," he said. "Most of what we're seeing is natural fluctuations."

Tuesday was historic for two reasons: It was the first time on record that two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the same year, with Felix coming two weeks after Hurricane Dean slammed into southern Mexico.

And Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes had never made landfall on the same date, according to records that began in 1949. However, at 5 a.m. on Aug. 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida 23 hours after Lester hit Mexico's Baja California, the Hurricane Center said.

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Great Lakes drying up...

U.S. senators target shrinking Great Lakes
Sept. 10, 2007 -- U.S. Sens. Russell Feingold and Herb Kohl, both of Wisconsin, are heading a group calling for a special hearing over why the Great Lakes are shrinking.

The request for an official inquest comes more than 2 1/2 years after a Canadian group said that plummeting volume levels in Lakes Michigan and Huron are caused by human activity, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Monday.

"We urge the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to hold a hearing to investigate the near-historic low lake levels and actions to address the likely contributors," the two Democrats said in a letter to the committee chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Leaders of the Canadian property-owners group, which did a study in 2005 that put the blame on human error and erosion in the St. Clair River, were thrilled to hear that the senators have finally decided to look into the issue, but were perplexed that it took them so long, the report said.

Source

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Africa hit hard by global warming...

Climate change 'devastating Africa'
Sep 18 2007 - Extreme rainfall and flooding as a result of climate change has destroyed crops, homes and livelihoods in parts of Africa, Christian Aid has warned.

The aid agency said a number of countries across the continent were experiencing more unpredictable weather conditions, with the worst rainfall in decades. Unusually heavy rain fell in the Ethiopian and Ugandan highlands in June and in Sudan in July, which was hit by floods as a result.

Flooding in Uganda washed away crops just as the harvest was due - following droughts earlier in the year. In Kenya the rains were unusually intense, forcing 20,000 people to flee their homes as dykes burst in the Budalangi region, and destroying their harvest, Christian Aid said.

And in Mali, homes, crops and market gardens have been destroyed along with bridges and dams in what locals describe as the worst floods since 1946, leaving them reliant on aid for clean water, blankets and food. Andrew Pendleton, Christian Aid's senior climate policy analyst warned: "These extremes of weather are exactly what have been predicted.

"Long dry periods followed by short, torrential rainy spells are creating havoc. "Harvests are being destroyed with the result people are no longer able to feed themselves. "The situation is only going to get worse unless we take action now."

Source

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UN Chief: Global Warming Demands Action
Sep 18, 2007 - U.N.'s Ban Ki-Moon Says Science Clear but Political Will Lacking in Confronting Global Warming

The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday. Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late." Asked at a news conference about President Bush's planned separate meeting to discuss global-warming measures among a handful of countries later next week, the U.N. chief said Bush assured him it would be coordinated with the established U.N. process of negotiating climate treaty commitments among all nations.

The U.S. administration rejects treaty obligations, such as the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Bush favors voluntary reductions instead. Of the Washington meeting, Ban told reporters, "We welcome individual measures and initiatives by many countries, but all these measures and initiatives should fit into the (U.N.) process."

He said about 80 heads of state and government would be among the 154 participants at Monday's all-day climate discussion. It isn't designed as a negotiation, but to send "a strong political message at the leaders' level for the climate change negotiations in Bali meeting in December," Ban said, referring to the annual U.N. climate treaty conference.

Bush isn't listed among participants in the day's events, although the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said he will join in the summit dinner that evening. In a series of major reports this year, a U.N.-sponsored scientific network said unabated global warming, potentially raising average temperatures by several degrees, would produce a far different planet by 2100 from rising seas, drought and other factors. The scientists said animal and plant life was already being disrupted.

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Global warming causing flooding in Africa...

Emergency pleas go out from Africa
Friday 21st September, 2007 International aid agencies have launched emergency fund appeals for flood-ravaged areas across the African continent.

Agencies urgently need to provide essential shelter and water purification tablets, to those affected by the crisis. In Uganda, the government has declared an emergency following the deaths of fifty people.

UN relief experts are dealing with the emergency in Uganda, as well as Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso. In northern Ghana, the White Volta River has burst its banks following days of torrential rain. Burkina Faso has been badly affected, with displaced people sheltering in schools while waiting for the government to build makeshift shelters.

The UN says 1.5 million people have been affected by the floods. Aid workers say food needs to be airlifted to areas which have lost their crops and are completely cut off. The floods are said to be the worst in many decades, with 250 killed and more than 600,000 displaced.

Emergency pleas go out from Africa

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Islands sinking...

We're Sinking! Island Nations Fear Global Warming
Oct 2, 2007 - World's Smallest Island Nations Warn of Threat From Global Warming

Island countries from around the world warned Tuesday that despite debate over global warming and the potential for a significant increase in sea levels, there has been little concrete action to stem the climate changes that threatens their existence. "The international community has convened numerous conferences and summits at which it has agreed on wide-ranging plans and programs of action," Foreign Minister of the Maldives Abdalla Shahid, told the U.N. General Assembly. "However ... all too often the reality of implementation has failed to match the ambitious rhetoric."

He was speaking just days after the world body convened its first-ever climate summit which sought to put new urgency into global talks to reduce global-warming emissions. The dangerous emissions, or greenhouse gases, come primarily from the burning of fossil fuels like coal-burning power plants. Scientists and environmentalists say carbon dioxide in particular is to blame for warmer temperatures, melting glaciers and rising sea levels. The United Nations organized last week's summit to create momentum for December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, when Europe, Japan and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 175-nation Kyoto pact, which the U.S. rejects, requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. The Maldives is a low-lying island nation consisting of a number of atolls in the Indian Ocean. As the flattest nation on earth with an average height of only 7 feet above sea level it is considered particularly vulnerable to the perils of global climate change. Climate researchers say that many of its islands will disappear over the next century as the seas rise.

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Thirsty bobcats in Nevada...

Dry weather forcing bobcats into Las Vegas
Nov. 4, 2007 -- Dry weather has driven a growing number of bobcats into populated Las Vegas neighborhoods in search of water.

Nevada Department of Wildlife game warden Victor Gamboa said he even recently attempted to catch one of the parched animals at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the city's main strip, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Sunday.

"He was just huddled down in the corner just minding his business," he said of the hotel-casino's unwanted visitor on Thursday. Nevada Department of Wildlife Law Enforcement spokesman Nick Duhe said the recent influx of bobcat sightings in such populated area is a direct result of two years of dramatically warmer weather.

"For the past two years, we've had extreme drought. Water and food are really hard to find for these animals," he said. The Review-Journal said that the bobcats are typically trapped alive and later released into the wild, but have been killed when they pose a possible threat to children in the area.

Source

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Gonna get hotter...

IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming
Friday, 16 November 2007, The IPCC says more heatwaves are very likely in the future

Climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, the UN's climate advisory panel is set to announce. Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed a summary of its landmark report during overnight negotiations here.

Discussions were said to have been robust, with the US and other delegations keen to moderate language. The summary will be officially launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

It brings together elements of the three reports that the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.

Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.

More BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming

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China facing a major global warming threat, say scientists
Nov.16, 2007 : Chinese scientists have warned that the country faces a major challenge in tackling the threat of global warming, adding that the climate is likely to get warmer and more extreme, leading to a drop in the production of major food crops.

According to Zheng Guoguang,the new chief of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA),the average temperature in China will inch up by about 2 C by 2050 compared with the 2000 level. In the latest effort to help mitigate the impact of climate change, Zheng has asked the 100,000 members working for the agency nationwide to develop measures to counter the adverse influence variable climate would have on food supply.

In many cases, crops grow faster when climate becomes warmer, but yields decline, Zheng said before heading to Spain to attend the 27th Plenary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is expected to launch the fourth and final volume of its "Climate Change 2007" assessment report for policymakers tomorrow in Valencia.

"If no improvement were made to the current farmland, production capacity would perhaps drop by up to 10 per cent by 2030, when the population will peak at 1.5 billion," the China Daily quoted Zheng, as saying. The country would have to produce another 100 million tons of grain for the added 200 million residents by then, but climate change would probably make a big dent in grain output, he added.

More China facing a major global warming threat, say scientists

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2007 was a hot year...

Records broken in heat waves in North America, Europe
WASHINGTON December 26, 2007 - When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder.

January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 0.85 degrees Celsius above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year. And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data.

England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 0.6 C. "Here in Canada, we can see the effects of climate change," Environment Minister John Baird told a Toronto audience in early December. "Winters don't come as they used to; they're much warmer ... Up in the Arctic in a place called Inuvik we've had a school which has actually come off its foundation because the permafrost is melting."

The World Meteorological Organization, a Geneva-based United Nations agency, reported another eye-opening event in the Far North. "For the first time in recorded history, the disappearance of ice across parts of the Arctic opened the Canadian Northwest Passage for about five weeks starting 11 August," the organization said. "Nearly 100 voyages in normally ice-blocked waters sailed without the threat of ice."

Climate scientists say that the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.

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