GENEVA — Ice volume around the Arctic region hit the lowest
level ever recorded this year as climate extremes brought death and devastation
to many parts of the world, the UN weather agency WMO said on Tuesday.
Although the world’s average temperature in 2008 was, at 14.3
degrees Celsius (57.7 degrees Fahrenheit), by a fraction of a degree the coolest
so far this century, the direction toward a warmer climate remained steady, it
reported.
"What is happening in the Arctic is one of the key indicators
of global warming," Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO), said. "The overall trend is still upwards."
A report presented by Jarraud at a news conference showed
Arctic ice cover dropping to its second lowest extent during this year’s melt
season since satellite measuring began in 1979.
However, the Geneva-based agency said, "because ice was
thinner in 2008, overall ice volume was less than in any other year." It added:
"The season strongly reinforced the 30-year downward trend in the extent of
Arctic Sea ice."
The dramatic collapse of a quarter of ancient ice shelves on
Canada’s Ellesmere Island in the north of the Arctic Ocean added to earlier
meltdowns, reducing cover in the region from 9,000 square km (3,500 sq miles) a
century ago to just 1,000 sq kms.
The WMO said the slight slowdown in warming this year, an
increase of 0.31C over the 14C of the base period 1961-90, against an average
0.43C for 2001-2007, was due to a moderate-to-strong La Nina in the Pacific in
late 2007.
"This decade is almost 0.2 degrees (Celsius) warmer compared
to the previous decade. We have to look at it in that way, comparing decades not
years," Peter Stott, a climate scientist at Britain’s Hadley Center, which
provided data for the WMO report, told Reuters in London.
La Nina is a periodic weather pattern that develops when
Pacific sea water cools. It alternates irregularly with the related El Nino –
when the Pacific warms up – and both affect the climate all round the world.
The WMO report was based on statistics and analyses compiled
by weather services among its 188 member countries and specialist research
institutions, including government-backed bodies in the United States and
Britain.
"Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe and
persistent droughts, snow storms, heat waves and cold waves were recorded in
many parts of the world," the agency said. In many of these, hundreds or even
thousands of people died.
Among the disasters was Cyclone Nargis, which killed some
78,000 in Myanmar’s southern delta region in early May. In the western Atlantic
and Caribbean there were 16 major tropical storms, eight of which developed into
hurricanes.
In an average year, there are 11 storms of which six become
hurricanes and two become major hurricanes. In 2008, five major hurricanes
developed, and for the first time on record six tropical storms in a row made
landfall in the United States.
The WMO says the 10 hottest years since global records were
first kept in 1850 have all been since 1997, with the warmest at 14.79 C in
2005. Countries have been struggling for years to reach agreement on how to halt
the trend.
This month a two-week meeting of leaders in Poznan, Poland, called to prepare
a treaty for late 2009 seemed to falter amid rows between rich and poor nations
and what some climate campaigners say was lack of will to get things done.
