As world temperatures soar, climate change blamed

By Andy Goldberg Jul 27, 2006, 1:36 GMT

People enjoying the beach during the heat wave in Nice, southern France 26 July 2006. French authorities issued an orange alert, the third-highest in a heat measuring scale ranging from lowest, green, to highest, red, as temperatures soared to 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit) in many parts of the country. EPA/STR CORBIS OUT

San Francisco - When pharmacist Michael Bradon flew home to San Francisco from London this week, he felt he had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

'London was stifling - and that city is not built for heat,' Bradon told a fellow passenger, referring to the record-breaking spell of July temperatures that has pushed the mercury to 40 degrees. 'On the buses, trains and houses it was like a sauna.'

But Bradon's expectation of cooling off in San Francisco melted like an ice cream in the sun.

The city is usually smothered in cool fog from the Pacific Ocean in the summer, but Bradon landed in the middle of a heatwave that is seen as California's worst in some 150 years.

'It's crazy what's going on,' Bradon complained as he landed at the sweltering airport. 'And our president says there's no global warming.'

Bradon meant US President George W Bush's reluctance to acknowledge climate change even though most scientific evidence indicates that human activity is largely to blame for what appears to be one of the fastest rises in global temperatures in millions of years.

This summer's heat has not been confined to California and Britain: Heat records have been shattered across Europe. In the Czech capital Prague, a 141-year-old record was broken on Thursday when the mercury reached 35.3 degrees. In Poland, temperatures hit a record high in the capital Warsaw during July.

Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported Wednesday that average day and night-time temperatures of 23.4 degrees were a full five degrees above the average and the highest ever since records began in 1779.

In Germany the World Cup, was played in stifling temperatures more typical of the Middle East than middle Germany. As the heat wave continues, Germans adopted unusual Mediterranean habits and dress codes, starting work early, taking siestas and wearing shorts, sandals and spaghetti tops whatever the occasion.

Across Europe the number of deaths directly attributed to the heat has risen past 30, the majority in France. In California alone, 56 people have reportedly died from heat-related causes, while elsewhere in the US record temperatures and rolling electricity blackouts have been regular.

According to the US space agency NASA, 2005 was the Earth's warmest year in more than a century and the preceding three years were also the warmest since the 1890s.

The US National Climatic Data Centre said the first half of 2006 was the warmest six months since records began in 1895. Cities are especially hard hit because the expansion of concrete, asphalt and roofs increases temperatures that would be absorbed by more climate- friendly forests.

Philip Jones, a climate research professor at Britain's East Anglia University, said global average temperatures in 10 of the last 12 years were the warmest since 1850. He also said the rate of temperature change in the 20th century was at least three times that of other centuries - evidence that this was more than a natural cycle.

But climate-change sceptics say the warming trend is caused because the planet is emerging from a mini-ice age, not the build up of gases that followed the Industrial Revolution.

Climate experts at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography caution that no single event or summer - no matter how unusual - can be directly attributed to global warming and the effects of pollution.

The problem is that separating the long-term trends from short t- term temperature peaks is notoriously difficult and that accurate analysis of global temperature trends can only really be made with the benefit of centuries of hindsight.

Nevertheless, it is hard to ignore the impression that every summer seems to get hotter. The current high temperatures also fit with computer projections for global warming.

'What we now call extreme events are becoming run-of-the-mill happenings,' said Scripps climatologist Tim Barnett. 'People talk about tipping points.

'We have gone past it. There is nothing we can do to stop it now. The only question is how big a hit we are going to take,' he said.