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UN: 2000-2009 could be Earth’s warmest decade ever
Negotiators, meanwhile, displayed charts of data that said the current decade is on track to be the hottest on record for planet Earth.
At the heart of Tuesday’s clash -- stemming from draft texts attributed to Denmark and China -- is the determination by the more impoverished states to bear a lesser burden than wealthy, more industrialized countries in the effort to slow global warming.
“It has no validity,” key European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said, speaking specifically of the Danish proposal. “It’s only a piece of paper. The only texts that have validity here are those which people negotiated.”
Earlier Tuesday, the UN’s weather agency boosted the sense of urgency surrounding the conference with data showing this decade is on track to be the hottest since records began in 1850, with 2009 the fifth-warmest year ever. The second warmest decade was the 1990s.
Only the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average, the World Meteorological Organization said, though Alaska had the second-warmest July on record. In central Africa and southern Asia, this will probably be the warmest year, but overall, 2009 will ”be about the fifth-warmest year on record,” said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the Swiss-based agency.
The last few decades are the warmest period in at least 400 years and probably 1,000 years, based on evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers and other scientific methods to track climate before record-keeping, according to a 2006 report by the US National Academy of Sciences.
Although temperatures have fluctuated, the causes were natural. The difference now is that they are being driven up by human activity, that modern civilization has many more coastal cities and needs to feed far more people, and that scientists believe humans can head off such dangerous warming.
Without a global deal stopping climate change, the planet’s average temperatures will rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius “well before the end of the century,” Jarraud said.
“What we want is to provide the best possible data for negotiators,” said Jarraud, who called the WMO data evidence “this is indeed globally the warmest period for more than 2,000 years.”
The current decade has been marked by dramatic effects of warming.
In 2007-2009, the summer melt reduced the Arctic Ocean ice cap to its smallest extent ever recorded. In the 2007-2009 International Polar Year, researchers found that Antarctica is warming more than previously believed. Almost all glaciers worldwide are retreating.
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