The Straits Times, 5 Dec 2014
LIMA (Peru) - This year is on track to be the hottest on record, or at least among the very warmest, the United Nations said in new evidence of long-term warming that adds urgency to 190-nation talks under way in Lima on slowing climate change.
Including this year, 14 of the 15 most sweltering years on record will have been in the 21st century, the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said of the findings presented during the Dec 1-12 climate negotiations in Peru.
"There is no standstill in global warming," WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a statement.
"What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface." The WMO said average sea surface temperatures hit record highs this year.
On land, it listed extremes including floods in Bangladesh and Britain and droughts in China and California.
Ms Christiana Figueres, head of the UN's Climate Change Secretariat, called the heat "bad news" that showed a need for action to limit carbon pollution.
If temperatures stay similarly above normal for the rest of the year, "2014 will likely be the hottest on record, ahead of 2010, 2005 and 1998", the WMO said, based on temperatures for January to October. A cool finish would push 2014 down the list.
The global average air temperature over land and the sea surface for January to October was 0.57 deg C above the average of 14 deg C for 1961-1990, the WMO said.In Singapore, the National Environment Agency said the average temperature for 2014 so far was 28.0 deg C. It said this was not significantly different from the average temperature over the past 10 years.
The Lima talks are working on a deal to limit climate change, due to be agreed in Paris in a year's time.
REUTERS
Extreme weather patterns becoming the new normal
The Straits Times, 5 Dec 2014
The Straits Times, 5 Dec 2014
LIMA (Peru) - Drought in California and Brazil, Britain's wettest winter and floods in the Balkans are examples of extreme weather patterns that are becoming the new normal.
"More and more people around the world are confronted with catastrophic climate change," Mr Martin Kaiser, head of climate politics at the environmental group Greenpeace, said at a UN conference in Lima, Peru, working to limit greenhouse gases.
The warmth is linked to unusual weather, with high ocean temperatures contributing to "exceptionally heavy rainfall and floods in many countries and extreme drought in others", the UN's World Meteorological Organisation said yesterday in a report on the state of the climate.
It said heatwaves occurred in South Africa, Australia and Argentina this year, while exceptional cold waves occurred in the United States in winter, in Australia in August and in Russia in October.
In August and September, millions of people were hit by flooding in northern Bangladesh, northern Pakistan and India.
Severe drought gripped the southern part of north-eastern China, and parts of the Yellow River and Huaihe river basins failed to get even half of the summer average rainfall.
On the positive side, tropical cyclone activity has been below normal so far, although a super typhoon is on track to hit the Philippines in days.
There are signs that doubts about climate change are dissipating in the US, a survey sponsored by the reinsurance company Munich Re showed.
The poll of 1,000 people published earlier this week showed 83 per cent of Americans believe global warming is happening and 66 per cent back taxes as a way to change the behaviour of consumers and businesses.
BLOOMBERG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
BLOOMBERG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE