Scientists are predicting that 2007 will be the hottest year ever recorded, due to the combined effects of El Niño and global warming. As a result, they predict that Indonesia will probably experience drought while California will receive excessive rain;
The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, [UK] was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.
Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.
Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records.
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Hottest year - yeah I'd say so. Here we are, January 1, 2007 and we've gotten a grand total of about an inch of snow over the season here in Rhode Island.
Not to mention that data for November shows average temps should be 35-42F whereas for 23 out of 30 days it was between 50-67F. December appears to have gone much the same and forecasts for January show 40-50's.
It's so warm that trees are budding again. I though trees were more light sensitive but apparently temperature plays a part. I'll have to snap pix and post them but I notice the trees next my building are budding, and the rhododendron next door has some fat buds and green leaves on it. I think its the evergreen variety but still, I've never seen it budding in December/January.
Although I live in gardening zone 4, I've started planting some zone 5 plants the past few years. They are all doing well.
I feel a little like that sad frog in the pot on the stove, every day, the water just a tad warmer.
Its hard not to obsess about about the Gulf Coast. The sad truth is that cities like Tallahassee, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, and Corpus Christi are going to be hammered and hammered and hammered by Cat5 hurricanes for the foreseeable future. Maybe not every year, but how many Cat5's makes a place unliveable? One wonders if it'll become a no-man's land that first the insurance companies, then the Feds will turn away from.
What will we call this fractured, flooded zone, this spawn of global warming?
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That's an inch more than New York, where there's still no snow in sight.
Here in the Pacific Northwest female Anna Humming Birds have join the males two months early! The coastal weather warm and windy but more so, than usual.
The Black Bear, always die-real l , has been far more active the past two years.
All anti antidotal , prove nothing, and add to the sense of concern.
We are a species of short-lived and short-sighted individuals! On my walk along the coast each morning, I see the destruction of Beach and dune grass. Four-wheeled drivers have wracked. havoc over night, kept company by the many dead Murres, Grebes, and s starved Northern Fulmers, starved but packed with Styrofoam!
Maybe we've passed the tipping point or at least lack the will to change.
any reaction about this issue?...