Unseasonal weather could wrong-foot retailers
The new year is predicted to be the warmest on record.
By Mark Higgins
The world could experience the warmest year on record in 2007, the British Meteorological Office (Met) said in a forecast Thursday. An extended warming period, resulting from an El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, was likely to push up global temperatures, the experts predicted.
They believe that there is a 60-per-cent chance that the average surface temperature would match or exceed the current record dating back to 1998. The global surface temperature was projected to be 0.54 degrees Celsius above the long-term average of 14 Celsius, beating the current record of 0.52 degrees Celsius.
Chris Folland, head of climate viability research at the Met’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research said the forecast was primarily based on two factors. The first was greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity, and the second the effect of the El Nino. El Nino events are marked by the arrival of unusually warm waters off the north-eastern coast of South America, and are described as the largest influence on the year-to-year variability of the Earth’s climate.
This year’s potential to be a record breaker is linked to a moderate strength El Nino already established in the Pacific Ocean. The 60-per-cent probability that 2007 would set a new record meant that it was ‘more likely than not,’ Folland explained.