Next year forecast to be hottest on record
The Independent (U.K.), Dec. 11, 2009
Prediction contradicts sceptics' claim that warming stopped in 1998
Global warming will resume its upward climb again next year, the UK Met Office predicted yesterday at the UN
The "central
estimate" of their forecast is that the global average surface
temperature for 2010 will be 0.58 degrees C above the long-term average
for 1961-1990 (which is 14 degrees C), compared to the average for
1998, which was 0.52 degrees above.
If a new
hottest year is indeed recorded, it will undermine the argument of
climate change sceptics that the actual warming of the atmosphere
ceased in 1998. Earlier this week the head of the World Meteorological
Organisation, Michel Jarraud, insisted the world was "still in a
warming trend". The new record is likely to be broken, the Met Office
said, because of a combination of global warming and El Nino, the
periodic, natural warming of the waters of the eastern tropical
Pacific, which is currently pushing up world temperatures.
In 1998, the
record was established because the El Nino of that year was the
strongest ever seen. But 2010 is likely to top it, climate scientists
believe, even though the present El Nino, which began this summer and
is likely to extend to next spring, is much less strong than its 1998
equivalent, and is regarded merely as "moderate".
This implies
that global warming will play an even stronger role in the average
temperature out-turn for next year, although the natural variability of
the climate will also play a part.
A record
warm year in 2010 is not a certainty, the Met Office statement said,
especially if the current El Nino was to decline rapidly near the start
of 2010, or there were a large volcanic eruption, such as that of Mount
Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, whose vast dust cloud, ejected
into the stratosphere, cooled the global climate for several years.
But there is
considered to be more than a 90 per cent chance that it will be hotter
than 2009, which is likely to turn out to be the fifth hottest year in
the global record, with an excess above the 1961-1990 average of 0.44
degrees - something the Met Office predicted precisely in its 2009
global forecast, issued a year ago.
Since the
Met Office began forecasting global temperatures 10 years ago, the
average error in the predictions has been 0.06 of a degree - so even if
the forecast of 0.58 above the baseline were out by that much, 2010
would still turn out to be joint hottest with 1998. The UK Met Office
is still suffering some public unpopularity for having forecast, last
April, that Britons would enjoy "a barbecue summer", when - although
average temperatures were considerably up on 2008 - July turned out to
be one of the wettest on record.
Asked why
the public should trust next year's global forecast when the summer
forecast was wrong - as the Met Office admitted - Dr Vicky Pope, the
head of climate advice, said it was much easier to predict the global
temperature that a national temperature average. "Forecasting for the
whole globe over the whole year means that the forecast is less
influenced by the vagaries of small-scale regional variability," she
said. "Global forecasting has a very high level of success compared to
similar forecasts for the UK."
She added
that the Met Office was by no means predicting a "barbecue year". "A
warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so in fact there would be likely
to be more rain," she said.
( c) 2009 Independent News and Media
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