Cape Town – World temperatures from December to February were the hottest on record – and last month was the second hottest February recorded.
These figures were released as some scientists say the Earth is moving into a period of changing climate that is likely to be faster than anything that has occurred naturally over the last thousand years.
What makes this period of climate change different from all others is that it is caused by humans, who have increased the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to a peak never experienced in 650 000 years.
The National Climatic Data Centre in the US released data which showed that last month the average temperature across the world’s land and ocean surface was 0.82ºC above the 20th-century average, and was the second highest February temperature since records began in 1880. The highest was in 1998.
The centre reports that the December to February average world ocean and land temperature was 0.79ºC above the 20th-century average – the highest temperature for these months surpassing the previous record of 2007.
Nasa says what pushed up the average global temperature were significantly warmer-than-usual winters in Europe, Eurasia, China and the Arctic. This offset the much colder weather in the north-eastern US and Canada than usual. In Boston, 2.4m of snow fell in just three weeks over January and February.
While the icy US east coast may appear at odds with the trend of a warming world, some scientists suggest the icy weather may be part of climate change. Jennifer Francis writes in Scientific American that scientists are working out linkages between the rapidly warming Arctic, caused by global warming, and how this may cause a “wavy jet stream”, resulting in “weird winter weather”.
“The Arctic is changing in a wholesale way and at a pace that makes even Arctic scientists queasy. Take sea ice, for example. In only 30 years, its volume has declined by about 60 percent, which is causing ripple effects throughout the ocean, atmosphere and ecosystem, both within the Arctic and beyond.
While the Arctic sea ice is melting, Nasa reports that the sea ice around the Antarctic is increasing, and has reached a record high this year, where sea ice covered more of the southern oceans since satellites began mapping it in the late 1970s.
Nasa scientist Claire Parkinson explained on the agency’s website that the increase in Antarctic sea ice in the presence of global warming reflects the complexity of the Earth’s environments.
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.
Cape Times