Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two of the world’s leading climate research centers.
Scientists have also released what they described as the “best evidence yet” of rising long-term temperatures. The report is the first to collate 11 different indicators — from air and sea temperatures to melting ice — each one based on between three and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and the 1970s.
The newly released data follows months of scrutiny of climate science after skeptics claimed leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia suggested temperature records had been manipulated — a charge rejected by three inquiries.
Publishing the newly collated data in London, Peter Stott, the head of climate modeling at the UK Met Office, said despite variations between individual years, the evidence was unequivocal.
“When you follow those decade-to-decade trends, then you see clearly and unmistakably signs of a warming world,” Stott said. “That’s a very remarkable result, that all those data sets agree. It’s the clearest evidence in one place from a range of different indices.”
Currently 1998 is the hottest year on record. Two combined land and sea surface temperature records from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) both calculate that the first six months of this year were the hottest on record. According to GISS, four of the six months also individually showed record highs.
A third leading monitoring program, by the Met Office, shows this period was the second hottest on record, after 1998, with two months this year — January and March — being hotter than their equivalents 12 years ago.
The Met Office said the variations between the figures published by the different organizations are because the Met Office uses only temperature observations, NASA makes estimates for gaps in recorded data such as the polar regions and the NCDC uses a mixture of the two approaches. The latest figures will give weight to predictions that this year could become the hottest on record.
Despite annual fluctuations, the figures also highlight the clear trend for the 2000s to be hotter than the 1990s, which in turn were clearly warmer than the previous decade, Stott said.
“These numbers are not theory, but fact, indicating that the Earth’s climate is moving into uncharted territory,” said Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at Clean Air Cool Planet, a US group dedicated to helping find solutions to global warming.
The cause of the warming was “dominated” by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, Stott said.
“It’s possible there’s some [other] process which can amplify other effects, such as radiation from the sun, [but] the evidence is so clear the chance there’s something we haven’t thought of seems to be getting smaller and smaller,” he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS