Climate, Storms Hit
Extremes in 2005
December 16, 2005 — By Robert Evans, Reuters
GENEVA — Catastrophic storms like
Hurricanes Katrina and Stan took weather extremes to new levels in 2005,
with flooding and heatwaves touching almost every continent, the United
Nations weather body WMO said on Thursday.
But in an annual review, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said that
while high temperatures and heavy rains could probably be linked to
global warming, this phenomenon could not yet be firmly blamed for the
summer's Caribbean hurricanes.
"This year is currently the second warmest on record, and could end up
being the warmest once all the figures are in," Jarraud told a news
conference. "It has certainly been exceptional in the intensity of its
storms."
A long-time weather scientist who has headed the Geneva-based World
Meteorological Organisation for the past two years, he said extreme heat
-- often bringing severe drought -- had spread across all continents but
Europe.
Europe itself -- mainly in its eastern and south-eastern regions -- had
suffered both torrential rains and flooding, which also affected
Bangladesh, China, New Zealand and Guyana in South America, among other
areas.
And the tropical systems that swept around the Caribbean and the Gulf of
Mexico trailing destruction and human tragedy were -- taken together --
the worst ever, with 26 named storms easily breaking the previous record
of 21 in 1933.
Of these, 14 became hurricanes -- two more than the previous record in
1969 -- and seven were classified as "major hurricanes", including
Katrina which devastated New Orleans and other U.S. Gulf cities in
August and killed some 1,300 people.
MOST INTENSE HURRICANE
Hurricane Wilma, which tore around coastlines in Central America in
October, was the most intense ever recorded in the region, Jarraud said.
Earlier that month, Hurricane Stan had swept across Guatemala and El
Salvador, laying waste to many poor communities, destroying coffee and
other crops and killing more than 1,000 in mudslides and floods.
Jarraud said it was not yet possible to assert that global warming was
responsible for generating the hurricanes.
"The honest answer is: we don't know if it is," he said. "A lot of
research is being done, and the IPCC (the U.N.'s advisory
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will be issuing a new report
in 2007, and that could shed more light on the question."
However, the WMO chief said, global warming was clearly tied to the
increasing incidence of heat waves, and the spread of deserts in areas
short of rain. "We can be much more confident about saying that," he
declared.
Jarraud said Arctic sea-ice was melting -- another phenomenon linked to
global warming -- more than ever before, and that the average cover in
the key month of September was down 20 percent on the average for
1979-2004.
Overall, the average temperature at the earth's surface so far for 2005
had been 0.48 degrees centigrade (0.86 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than
the comparable average for 1961-90 of 14 degrees centigrade, used as a
reference period, the WMO said.
The hottest year since governments began sharing data was 1998, when the
average surface temperature was 0.54 degrees centigrade above the
reference period average.
Source: Reuters
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