A long hot summer of fire and flood

The World Meteorological Organization (World Meteorological Organization), whose headquarters is in Geneva, said that July and August weather disasters entirely correspond to projections of climate scientists - though these scholars always feel free to link directly to specific disasters to global warming.

Today, experts see an urgent need to improve ways of forecasting extreme weather events such as intense heat and fires in Russia and the record in its scale floods that struck Pakistan. They will discuss it at meetings, which in this and next month will be held in Europe and America under the auspices of the United Nations, as well as American and British governments.

Climatologist Peter Stott, who works for the British government, wrote that ...

According to him, the scientists involved in modeling the changes in the climate system of the planet, ... These changes can cause extreme weather events.

Climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has long been predicted that because of the global temperature rise on the planet may become more frequent and intensify heat waves and increased rainfall. In its recent analysis estimates voiced in 2007, the IPCC, who had obtained the Nobel Prize, went further. For example, she stated that these trends become more frequent heat waves are observed since 1950.

However, most climate scientists refrained from blaming warming occurred this summer, floods or drought, as the weather also affects many other factors.

Scott and Gavin Schmidt (Gavin Schmidt) from the New York Institute for Space Studies Goddard (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) by NASA, say that it is better to address this issue in terms of probability of change: for example, warming may increase the likelihood of double . ...

However, as already pointed out the World Meteorological Organization, the events of this summer correspond to projections of the international group of scientists, indicating the emergence of ...

Key cases of extreme weather, and in fact ideally suited to scientists' predictions.

Russia.

This summer was the hottest ever recorded in Russia. The temperature in Moscow for the first time on record rose to 37.8 degrees Celsius. The drought has caused hundreds of forest fires and peat bogs dried up and engulfed western Russia with a blanket of poisonous smog. The mortality rate in Moscow doubled to 700 deaths per day. The drought has destroyed over a third of the wheat harvest.

In a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) in 2007, predicted a doubling of cases of disastrous drought in Russia in this century. There were also links to research, predict occurrence of catastrophic fires in dry years. The report also mentioned the possibility of major crop losses in Russia.

Pakistan.

Record heavy monsoon rainfall - 300 mm of rain in 36 hours - were the reason that the raging river flooded a large part of rural areas. Due to the floods killed 1,500 people and 14 million. Pakistanis were left homeless or otherwise affected. The government calls it the worst natural disaster in the history of the nation.

In a warmer atmosphere can be maintained - and stand - more moisture. The IPCC report in 2007 stated that over the past 40 years in northern Pakistan has increased the intensity of rainfall. In addition, it predicted severe flooding in the monsoon -prone regions of South Asia in this century.

China.

According to WMO, observed in China, floods were the largest in the country over the past few decades. Especially in the affected north-western Gansu province, where last weekend due to flooding and landslides killed at least 1117 and was missing about 600 people, who, as fear, buried under the rubble and a layer of dirt.

In 2007, the IPCC reported that since 1961 the amount of precipitation in the north- western China has increased by 33 percent, and large-scale floods occur seven times more frequently than in the 1950s. According to its forecasts, in this century, the frequency of flooding will continue to grow.

Arctic.

Last week, the researchers noted, both the Petermann glacier, located in north-western Greenland, a block of ice broke off an area of ​​260 square. km. It is the largest ice mass in the Arctic has broken away for half a century of observations.

A huge iceberg appeared just five months later after an international team of scientists published a report which said reducing zone of the Greenland ice sheet extended from the south of the island to the north- west coast.

Changes in ice cover, ...

With specific regard to the Arctic Ocean this summer melting of the ice sheet has reached unprecedented proportions. Satellite data show that last month the area of ​​ocean covered by ice, was the second lowest ever recorded in July.

Melting ice in the coastal ocean is about 60 percent responsible for the accelerating rise in sea water around the world, the rest of the responsibility lies with the thermal expansion of water by heating. According to the World Climate Research Programme of WMO, sea level rise annually by 3.4 mm, twice the average growth in the 20th century.

Measurements of the temperature around the world, meanwhile, show that the first half of 2010 was the hottest first six months for all 150 years of observations of global climate. Meteorologists say that the 2010 temperature records were established in 17 countries - more than any other year.

Scientists blame warming carbon dioxide and teploulavlivayuschie gases entering the atmosphere through the pipes of power plants, cars and trucks, furnaces and other industrial and residential facilities that burn fossil fuels.

Today, experts are loudly than ever are trying to convince the world of the need to drastically reduce emissions to protect the environment, nurtured modern civilization.

... China today is a world leader in emissions, even ahead of the U.S..

But not all are ready to act.



American inaction, dating back to the 1990s, is the main reason for global negotiations were frustrated and did not sign the new contract expires after the Kyoto Protocol. This is - a relatively weak agreement to reduce emissions, to which all other industrialized states.

Governments all over the world, especially the poorest countries that may suffer the most, by all means try to find ways and money to adapt to climate change and rising sea water.

Meetings climatologists that in the coming weeks will be held in Paris, Britain and Colorado will be one of the steps towards such an adaptation. Scientists try to find ways to identify trends in weather extremes and will be engaged in the improvement of prediction of natural phenomena.

The UN Disaster says that you must do much more.

Director of the Secretariat of the UN to combat the effects of natural disasters (U. N. 's International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) Salvano Breach (Salvano Briceno) pointed out the factors that aggravated the last climatic catastrophe. It is China's refusal to stop deforestation, promote landslides, the low level of forest management in Russia, added fuel to the fires, as well as the settling of poor Pakistanis, in a densely populated country in the floodplains of rivers and channels of withered, the power over which suddenly took swift water .

... This is understandable - he said Breach. - But the main trend, which should pay attention - increasing the vulnerability of the population, which is explained by the fact that more people do not live there, where you have to do and not what is needed ...

In preparing the material involved the Beijing correspondent for AP Bodine, Christopher (Christopher Bodeen).

Original publication: Long hot summer of fire and floods fit predictions.



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