Rising temperatures threaten Earth – UN report

4 Jul 2013

Rising temperatures threaten Earth – UN report

KABUL - The first decade of the 21st century was the warmest in the world since modern measurements began around 1850, and 2010 was the hottest year ever recorded, with far-reaching implications for our environment, according to a United Nations report released on Wednesday.

The report, 'The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes', released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said the planet experienced “unprecedented high-impact climate extremes” during the decade and more national temperature records were broken during that period than in any other decade.

“Many of these events and trends can be explained by the natural variability of the climate system. Rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, however, are also affecting the climate,” said the Secretary-General of WMO, Michel Jarraud, in the report. He also noted the impact of “rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases” on rapid climate change.

Afghanistan has experienced severe impact from climate change in the form of natural disasters and inconsistent temperature patterns. “Afghanistan is currently suffering the most severe drought in living memory,” said a recent report commissioned by the UK Department for International Development.

According to a non-governmental organization working to save wildlife and wild places worldwide, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Afghanistan is facing the threat of global climate change on a large scale, “potentially affecting both the country’s natural resources and its socio-economic development.”

According to a WCS report, since the early 1960s, the country has begun witnessing an increased frequency of drought, which could become the norm there by 2030.

The mean annual temperature has increased by approximately 0.60C since 1960 with spring rainfall decreasing by around 2.7 millimetres per month, which will dry the environment further if the trend continues, the WCS report stated.

“Models do point towards significant warming across all areas of Afghanistan, with average predicted increases in temperature possibly up to 60C by 2090,” it added.

The WMO report, which incorporates findings from a survey of 139 national meteorological and hydrological services and socio-economic data and analysis from several UN agencies and partners, said extreme floods, droughts and tropical cyclones were all experienced across the world throughout the 2001-2010 decade, and more than 370,000 people died as a result of these, representing a 20 per cent increase in casualties from the previous decade.

The release of the UN report coincides with the first session of the Intergovernmental Board on Climate Services, which oversees the implementation of the Global Framework for Climate Services – an international initiative to improve and expand scientifically-based climate information to help society cope with the climate and human induced climate change.

The session, which opened on Tuesday in Geneva and will run until Friday, will focus on how to provide operational climate services to help countries and communities cope with long-term climate change and associated extreme weather events.

Read the full report: The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes