'2010 to be the world's warmest year'

LONDON: 2010 is likely to be the world's warmest year on record, the British Met Office has
predicted.

According to the Met Office, man-made climate change will be a factor and natural weather patterns would contribute less to 2010's temperature than they did in 1998, the current warmest year in the 160-year record.

El Niño effect, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, is much weaker than it was in 1998, but the Met Office expects the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions to more than make up the difference, 'The Times' reported.

It predicts that the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6 C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, and forecasts an annual average of 14.58 C.

The Met Office has also said that it expects half the years between 2010 and 2019 to be warmer than 1998. It sounded a note of caution, saying that a record year in 2010 was not a certainty, especially if the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.

However, experts are divided on the prediction. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record, it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists that we're experiencing global cooling. In reality the world is getting possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it."

But, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has accused the Met Office of making a "political intervention" in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.

"Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognised difficulties in making such confident predictions," it said.

2008 was 8th warmest year on record

Article from TOI (Mumbai Edition [ME]) dt: 19th Jan, 2009

Last year was the eighth warmest year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The world’s temperature in 2008 tied that of 2001 according to the center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Preliminary calculations show the world’s average temperature for 2008 was 0.49°C above the 20th century average of 13.9°C. The ranking means that all of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Researchers fear far-reaching effects of global warming, ranging from changing storm patterns, damage to crops and wildlife, droughts to spread of disease. The climate center noted that since 1880, the annual combined global land and ocean surface temperature has increased at a rate of 0.05°C per decade and the rate has increased over the past 30 years.

The implication of the above article is global warming....floods....scarcity of food.....loss of lives.....END OF THE WORLD.