2005 Likely 2nd or 3rd Hottest Year On Record - UK Met - Reuters

[hatrack]

LONDON - 2005 will be the second or third warmest year on record globally, Britain's national weather service said on Friday, as climate concerns build among people in polar and low-lying areas and in the insurance and utility industries.

"Whether it is second or third depends on how Siberia reacts between now and the end of the year," said Wayne Elliott, Met Office spokesman. "1998 was the warmest ever, 2005 is looking at being second. It will be another very warm year generally, which is in line with global climate change research." The Met Office bases its measurements on both land and sea temperatures.

After 1998, the four hottest years globally were the last four years, according to Met Office data going back to 1861. The second hottest year was 2002, followed by 2003, 2004 and 2001. The trend adds weight to concern among many scientists that the world is hotting up and that human activity including burning of fossil fuels and generation of "greenhouse gases" by industry is playing a major part.

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Meanwhile, in Europe Portugal and Spain have experienced their worst droughts ever recorded, and further east, floods and torrential rain drenched Switzerland, Germany, Austria and EU membership-candidates Bulgaria and Romania.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/33006/story.htm

[rurallib]

1. Heard a spokesman for NOAA on NPR last week

say they(NOAA) have already declared 2005 the hottest on record, beating 1998 with 3 months left. He said only a major worldwide cold snap could change that prediction. They take 7,000 worldwide readings daily and somehow average them to get their temperature. No matter the methodology, they've been doin it that way for a long time. 1998 had large el-nino. 2005 has no normal reason for the heat.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. And no El Niño is forming, either

It appears that this winter may be a weak La Niña winter. Moderately good for skiing in the East (though not prone to produce blizzards), but otherwise just another wet phase of the weird weather that has become normal.

I live in Bucks County, PA, by the way, and the trees are just starting to change. Never seen it so late. It's a little chilly at night, but the temperatures are still 5F-10F above normal.

--p!

[rurallib]

3. I live in southern Iowa so we're probably the same latitude

and the trees just changing here also, about two weeks late. I am still getting tomatoes! I have never seen a tomato plant die of old age. They always get frostbit. This may be the year.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Iowa should be further along by now

I'm at 42N, but the National Weather Service and Department of Agriculture frost maps have a kind of "dip" or U-shape to them; toward the center of the country, the color change starts earlier.

Here, the color change is visible, but it is not very far along. I'm starting to think it's more like three weeks, maybe 25 days late this year. Each year since at least 2003, it's been later; my brother thinks the trend started close to a decade ago but was interrupted once or twice.

Incidentally, he's also still getting tomatoes as well as new vegetative plant growth -- the main hobbyist cultivar around here is the Burpee Better Boy, a hybrid Jersey tomato. (Plus, we lived about a mile from Burpee HQ when we were growing up, so we were suburbanized city boys who got steeped in farm lore -- talk about your multicultural experience!)

Winters have also been getting strange. We've had two significant snowstorms on December 5th recently (2002 and 2004), and every winter since the mid-1990s has started out cold, had a warm phase in what would ordinarily be the height of winter, and ended cold and snowy. Ten years isn't enough for a real statistical test, but it's still a little odd.

If this is what a 0.6F worldwide average temperature increase does, the next 20 years should be interesting. That Christmas cook-out and swim party in 2022 is looking more likely ... sledding in Philly on Independence Day 2025, anyone?

--p!

[rurallib]

6. As to your brother's comments - I told my kids nearly 15 years

ago that something strange was happening, that the world was turning upside down, because winters were so warm. I love sledding and after 1995 or so we have had very little to sled on. I'd take my kids out at 5 in the morning before the little bit of snow would melt.
We had one winter where it would snow in the morning and be completely melted by sundown. Seldom gets below zero anymore. This in an area that used to get 100+ straight hours below zero.
Hard winters used to kill the fleas and bugs to make it more tolerable in the summer. This year the drought did them in.

[SteppingRazor]

4. What a strange coincidence!

Odd that the hottest years on record are the last five years, yeah? What a bizarre coincidence. After all, it surely couldn't be explained scientifically. :sarcasm: