Courtesy of space.com
• The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1983. Seven of the hottest years have occurred since 1990. The year 1998 was by far the hottest year on record, and was the 20th consecutive year with an above normal global surface temperature. Since the mid-19th century, global temperatures have increased by 0.5C. • Extreme weather conditions are becoming common place. Massive fires raged across Europe in the hot 1994 and, in 1995, floods caused the evacuation of a quarter of a million people in Holland. Droughts and severe rainfall deficits have caused massive loss of life in the past decade, with India and Brazil being hit hard in the year 1998. • Mountain glaciers are melting, along with ice at the poles and tundra permafrost. In 1994 the British Antarctica Survey reported that the Antarctica Peninsula had warmed by 2.5 C. It fears that this is linked to the disintegration of Antarctic ice-sheets. One impact on the natural life of the region is the decline in penguin populations. • The oceans are getting warmer and expanding. This has led to predictions that sea levels will rise fast in the next 50 years and that some low-lying nations, like the Maldives, the Seychelles and the Somoas, will disappear. There is a current view that the warm water El Nino effect has been exacerbated by global warming. • Plants, birds and animals are migrating northwards. This is probably because of warming air or sea temperatures. •
Malaria has become more widespread at northern latitudes where
previously it wasn't a problem. The Lancet medical magazine
reports that in Pakistan mosquitoes live longer than expected
and a Harvard researcher, Paul Epstein, says that mosquitoes
transmitting dengue fever are now reported at 2000 metre altitudes
instead of just at around 1000 metres. BBC Online |
