2006 Review: Another year of extreme weather, but is it global warming?

By Heather Lima Dec 28, 2006, 12:37 GMT

Geneva - Flooding in the Horn of Africa, typhoons in Asia, drought in Australia, and the latest prediction that Arctic ice may melt completely in the summer months as soon as 2040.

Extreme weather appears to be happening in every corner of the globe and signs of global warming seem more glaring but no one is certain how far the two are related.

Scientists predict the Earth will warm by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Though climate change is nothing new, what is different is the possible impact of man in releasing carbon dioxide gases, that most scientists believe contribute to heating the atmosphere artificially, by burning fossil fuel and other activities.

The year 2006 was the sixth warmest year on record, according to the latest report on the global climate published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The warmest year so far was 1998, followed by 2005.

However, the warming up of the planet is erratic. The sharpest rise in the 20th century was from 1976, with the 90s proving the warmest decade.

Extreme temperatures were recorded around the world in 2006. Many European countries experienced the hottest autumn since records began in the 17th century.

Parts of the United States saw flooding and others heatwaves.

The Horn of Africa, hit by severe drought in 2005, became a humanitarian disaster zone in October and November 2006, this time due to severe floods following heavy rainfall in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.

Typhoons wreaked record damage in South-East Asia. For China it was the worst typhoon season in a decade causing 1,000 deaths and 10 billion dollars of damage.

Typhoon Durian affected some 1.5 million people in the Philippines at the end of November, with more than 500 dead and hundreds more still missing.

However, the experts are reluctant to draw firm conclusions. 'It is always difficult to talk about trends,' WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud said.

Jarraud declined to say if he believed freak weather was occurring more frequently.

Certainly the pattern of ferocious Atlantic hurricane seasons, which peaked in 2005, was broken in 2006. Despite predictions to the contrary by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, 2006 saw near normal seasonal activity.

Dr Gerry Bell, a forecaster at NOAA, said, 'El Nino developed quickly and the atmosphere responded rapidly, reducing hurricane activity during an otherwise active era that began in 1995.'

El Nino is a periodic warming of the ocean waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific which influences weather around the world.

Predicting the weather remains an imprecise science, but assessing the aftermath is more certain.

Natural disasters, including weather phenomena such as hurricanes Katrina and Stan, cost 160 billion dollars in 2005, according to the World Disasters Report published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in December. The amount was more than double the decade's annual average.

Meanwhile in October a report spelt out the gloomiest prediction so far of the impact of global warming on the world economy.

Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said failure to tackle climate change would risk economic and social upheaval comparable to the great depression of the 1930s.

It could shrink the world economy by 20 per cent, equivalent to an estimated 6.95 trillion dollars by 2050. 'Without action, droughts, floods and rising sea levels would mean that up to 200 million people could be displaced and become refugees,' Stern said.

He called for 1 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) to be spent immediately on tackling climate change.

Global warming throws up almost daily news headlines. In mid December, a report co-authored by Cecilia Blitz of the University of Washington claimed if greenhouse emissions continue at the present rate, large areas of the Arctic would be totally ice free in the summer months by 2040.

Her colleague, Peter Rhines, said, 'The emerging global-warming signal seems to be more and more potent, more and more believable, and more and more certain.'

Professor Martin Beniston of the University of Geneva said, 'Global warming is underway, and the general scientific consensus is that human influence on the climate system has emerged as a key element of the observed warming since probably the 1960s. It is a long-term problem that cannot be rapidly reversed.'

The WMO is not prepared at this time to say how far severe weather is caused by global warming.

'The last report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) looked into possible links between climate warming and drought, rainfall and heatwaves, but we are still in a phase of doing more research to find the answer,' WMO Secretary General Jarraud said. 'It is something they will have more on in their next report.'

Fortunately the IPCC, set up in 1988 by the WMO and UN Environment Programme to follow global climate change, is due to report next in 2007.

The hefty number of reports on global warming are seemingly only outweighed by incidents of severe weather.

Whether human action causes global warming and the resulting catastrophic weather is not clear.

If it does, then a consensus on remedial action can be reached, although this remains a distant possibility.

If it is not manmade, then there is little we can do about global warming apart from preparing policies to mitigate the very worst consequences.

Either way the forecast is a bleak one.