Overtone writes: By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent, UK
Published: 18 December 2005
The world is now hotter than at any
stage since prehistoric times, a top climatologist announced last week. His
startling conclusion comes as Nasa reported that 2005 has been the hottest year
ever recorded.
Dr Michael Coughlan, head of the
National Climate Centre at the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology,
said: "One probably has to go back into prehistoric times - and way back
in them - to be seeing these sorts of temperatures."
Top British climatologists agree
privately but are cautious of saying so in public because, naturally, no
measurements were taken of temperatures then.
Dr Coughlan is supported by research
that shows carbon dioxide levels in the air - the main cause of global warming
- are higher now than at any time in the past hundreds of thousands of years.
Scientists in Bern, Switzerland, and
Oregon in the United States analysed levels of the gas in tiny air bubbles
trapped in Antarctic ice during the past 650,000 years. They found current
levels were 27 per cent greater than the highest level over that period.
Professor Sir David King, the
Government's Chief Scientist, has said the last time levels of the gas were
that high was 60 million years ago. And that was during a period of rapid
warming in the Palaeocene epoch, which caused a massive reduction in life on
Earth.
Meanwhile, top climatological bodies
around the world report that 2005 is vying with 1998 as the warmest year on
record. Nasa says it just beats it, while the Met Office says it is just behind
it, and the US government's National Climatic Data Centre says the two years
are statistically indistinguishable.
Whichever is right, 2005 has been a
remarkable year, for 1998 was made much hotter by a strong El Niño, the warm
Pacific current that strongly affects weather around the globe.
Last June, September and October
were all logged as the warmest ever, world-wide. The past 10 years are all in
the warmest 10 ever recorded, apart from 1996 whose place is taken by 1990.
This year Arctic sea ice dropped to
its smallest ever extent, the Atlantic suffered a record hurricane season and
an unprecedented drought reduced the flow of the Amazon to its lowest ever
level. Canada and Australia had their hottest ever weather this year, while
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria suffered heatwaves touching 50C.