The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency of the UN, has expressed alarm at the “thaw in the Arctic in August and September, which reached record levels.” This is manifested in its annual report on climate change in 2012, presented in Geneva.
WMO has also confirmed that the year 2012 has been one of the ten warmest years recorded since they started counted temperatures in 1850.
“The number of this year, representing a decrease of 49% of the ice sheet, compared with the minimum average recorded between 1979 and 2000,” the WMO said. The Greenland ice sheet was also “very melted early July” and is the clearest evidence of thawing “since the start of satellite observations, for 34 years.” Is a “worrying sign of climate change” , said the Frenchman Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of WMO.
“The Thaw joins other extreme events occurred in 2012, as droughts and tropical cyclones .’s Natural climate variability has always given rise to these susceso, but climate change accentuates” he added.
To illustrate his arguments, WMO says that storms as ‘Sandy’ “now cause” more and more severe coastal flooding. “The sea level has risen 20 centimeters since 1880,” the WMO.
In November 2012, WMO had already indicated based on the first ten months of the year, that 2012 was marked by excessive heat and for record Arctic ice melting, excluding periods of extreme cold. In 2012, the average temperature of the earth’s surface rose 0.45 degrees Celsius .
“For 27 consecutive years the average temperature on the surface of the earth and the ocean is higher than normal, as had been estimated for 1961-1990,” WMO said, adding that between 2001 and 2012 “all have among the 13 warmest years ever recorded” . And the forecast is that “warming will continue”, due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
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