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Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weatherMore evidence of the link to climate changePosted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 1:01 PM on 07 Aug 2007 Now the World Meteorological Organization reports more evidence: In January and April 2007 it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89°C warmer than average for January and 1.37°C warmer than average for April. Several regions have experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. The Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change (IPCC) notes an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years. IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent. "The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," said Omar Baddour of the WMO's World Climate Program. Here are some of the extremes that have been happening around the globe in 2007 as reported by Reuters and the WMO: South Asia's worst monsoon flooding in recent memory has affected 30 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, destroying croplands, livestock and property and raising fears of a health crisis in the densely-populated region ... We are changing the climate. And it will only get worse. Heck, if we're seeing this much extreme weather from a 0.8°C warming over the past century, imagine what will happen in the coming decades when we warm three to five times as much (or more). And, for the deniers still out there, WMO threw in this: According to the most recent climate change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature. The 100-year trend (1906-2005) is 0.74°C. The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years. Paleoclimatic studies suggest that the average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in the past 1,300 years. So, yes, it will get worse. The sooner we act, the more we can minimize the future damage.
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