Last ten years 'warmest on record'
Last decade by far the warmest on record, Met Office says as climate change talks continue in Copenhagen
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By Adam Leveridge. |  |
Tuesday, 08, Dec 2009 01:30
By Matthew Champion.
The last ten years were by far the warmest decade since records began, the Met Office has said as climate change talks continue in Copenhagen.
Figures jointly conducted by the Met Office and the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest since instrumental records started in 1850.
Although 1998 remains the warmest individual year on record, 2009 is expected to become the fifth-warmest, 0.44C above the long-term average of 14C.
"These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed," the Met Office said.
The Met Office's Hadley Centre figures are based on climate data from networks of land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys and satellites and collected in cooperation with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Similar results have emerged from studies by the US' National Climatic Data Centre (NDC) and Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The WMO said large parts of the world had experienced an increase in climate extremes including devastating floods, severe droughts, snowstorms, heat-waves and cold-waves.
The world's leading politicians and scientists are assembling in Copenhagen for the next fortnight in order to establish a new deal on cutting emissions.
It has been dubbed the most important meeting in the history of mankind but officials have already admitted that a legally-binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol is not possible.