Global Warming To Rise After 2009
Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.
Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005.
By including short-term natural events, such as El Nino, a UK team says it is able to offer 10-year projections. Models have previously focused on how the globe will warm over a century.
Writing in Science, Met Office researchers project that at least half of the years between 2009 and 2014 are likely to exceed existing records.
However, the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009.
Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F).
“The climate has already changed, and it is continuing to change; people need the best information available to help them adapt to these changes,” Doug Smith, a climate scientist at the Hadley Centre, said.
Date: August 9, 2007
Article: Ten-year climate model unveiled
Reference: Scientific American