Global surface temperatures increasing

Global surface temperatures increasing

   February 11, 2008

According to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on  Climate Change (IPCC), the global average surface temperature has increased  over the 20th century by about 0.6°C.

 

 

 

 

 

 Report also indicate that past and current emissions mean that an increase in temperature of 1°C to 1.5°C is  inevitable. Yet the increase of 0.6°C that has already occurred is having a severe  impact on global ecosystems and especially on poor people.

 

 

 

Already Southern Africa has had the pinch of global warming. Floods have displaced thousands of people in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi as well as Mozambique. Most of the corn fields have been damaged.

 

 

 

To avoid the most  serious impact of global warming and climate change, we need to ensure that  global mean temperature is limited to a 2°C increase above pre-industrial levels, as  agreed by the UK Government at the European Council conclusions of May 2003.

 

Temperature rises beyond 2°C are, according to the IPCC, likely to result in  reduced crop yields in most tropical, sub-tropical, and mid-latitude regions .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kind of devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch that hit Central America in  1998 or the 2004 floods in Bangladesh and India shows that an acute danger now  exists for many of the slow, hard-won gains in human development of the last few decades. Things that took many years to build  could be swept away in a matter of hours. The frontline  experience of working in international development indicates that, already, many of the communities  have to combat more extreme  weather conditions – droughts, floods, typhoons. These people have to adapt now.

 

 

 

 

 

Storms, floods, drought, heat waves, and atmospheric pollution due to forest fires

 

now have acquired regional dimensions. During the 1990s and early 21st century

 

many of these effects have filled our televisions screens. In Central America,

 

Hurricane Mitch destroyed much of the infrastructure of Honduras and devastated

 

parts of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador.

 

In Asia, serious floods affected Nepal, India, China, Vietnam, Cambodia as well as other countries.

 

 

 

 

 

The panel says that “There is new and  stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. It also concludes that the combustion of fossil  fuels is mostly to blame.

 

 The IPCC climate models project that global average  surface temperature will increase by 1.4°C to 5.8°C by 2100, depending largely on  the scale of fossil-fuel burning. The projected rate or speed of change is probably  without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years.