Figures 'nail claims of climate sceptics'

Published on Tuesday 8 December 2009 21:44

THIS decade has been the warmest since records began and 2009 will be among the five hottest years ever experienced, scientists revealed yesterday.

Met Office figures showed that, while 1998 was the hottest single year on record, the past decade has been the warmest period in the 160-year history of global temperature monitoring. And the World Meteorological Organisation simultaneously published provisional findings that 2009 would probably be the fifth-warmest since records began in 1850 – and 0.44C above the long-term average of 14C.

Copenhagen climate summit blog: Day Three

Experts claimed that the latest temperature statistics put a nail in the coffin of global warming sceptics.

A "climategate" scandal has been threatening to overshadow talks at a crucial 192-nation global warming summit in Copenha-gen. In an attempt to deflate the scandal, the Met Office also yesterday published data from 1,500 weather stations across the world. A graph put together using the data showed temperatures steadily rising for the past 150 years.

The data has been made public on the Met Office's website.

Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland said: "These figures once and for all put a nail in the coffin of the sceptics argument that climate change is not happening." He added: "The Met Office data is a stark reminder of how crucial it is world leaders meeting in Copenhagen agree tough targets to keep climate change below a 2C temperature rise and keep human civilisation going."

The "climategate" scandal broke just weeks ahead of the Copenhagen summit, where negotiations are taking to try to draw up a deal to tackle global warming.

E-mails taken from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on websites run by sceptics.

The e-mails, which include a reference to a "trick" to "hide the decline", have been seized on as evidence of scientists manipulating or suppressing data to back up a theory of man-made global warming.

Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the WMO, told a news conference the decade 2000 to 2009 was "very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, than the 1980s and so on".

"It's just a matter of years before we break the record," he added. "It's getting warmer and warmer. The warming trend is increasing."

Mr Jarraud rejected the "climategate" row over leaked e-mails.

He highlighted that the WMO uses three separate data sources, one which includes data from the CRU.

"The three separately show almost identical results," he said.

Professor Tim Flannery, Professor of Environmental and Life Sciences at Macquarie University, in Sydney, and chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, said the data from the Met Office and WMO was "proof" the sceptics were wrong.

"A central plank of the climate sceptics' creed has been that the Earth has been cooling since 1998," he said.

"They have misled many, and damaged public policy as a result. Here is the definitive proof that they are wrong.

"Unfortunately the warming trend continues, and will continue as long as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to grow."

And Greenpeace climate campaigner Joss Garman said: "This is an unmistakable climate signal that shows how humans are warming the Earth.

"The core of the sceptics' case was that we've been experiencing global cooling, but that claim was never justified by the science."

He added: "This won't stop some people pushing the conspiracy theory that climate change isn't happening, but here in Copenhagen the new data is being discussed by governments and is sure to focus minds."

The raw data released by the Met Office is a subset of the data from 5,000 sites across the planet, which will also be released when the Met Office has permission.

Only the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average over 2009, according to the WMO.

If 2009 ends as the fifth-warmest year, it would replace 2003. The other warmest years since 1850 have been 2005, 1998, 2007 and 2006.

Professor Mark Maslin, director of the UCL Environment Institute, said: "The weight of scientific evidence for manmade climate change is now irrefutable.

"Data from two of the world's most respected scientific organisations, the Met office and WMO, show that this is the warmest decade that humanity has ever recorded and that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record.

"Combine this data with scientific evidence collected from satellites showing the retreat of Arctic sea ice, the retreat of nearly all the world's glaciers and even the evidence from the great British public that spring is now arriving two weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, and climate change is shown to be incontrovertible."

At the end of next week, more than 100 national leaders, including US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, will converge on Copenhagen for the final days of bargaining at the summit. Scientists say without an agreement to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, the Earth will face the consequences of ever– rising temperatures.

This would include extreme flooding, drought, spread of disease and extinction of plants and animals.