Scientists stated Tuesday that the global warming rate remains unaffected despite the deep freeze enveloping Europe and the blizzards in the United States.
The freezing cold, especially the forecasted extreme winter conditions in some parts of the US this March, have led experts to speculate whether global warming has slowed down.
Completely understanding the whole trend is significant when it comes to estimating the use of energy resources, such as the demand for heating oil during the winter season in the northeast part of the US that greatly affects agricultural production.
Veteran Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls, during an online media briefing about climate science, said, “It’s not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven’t warmed in the past 50 years.”
“January, according to satellite (data), was the hottest January we’ve ever seen,” added Nicholls, who works at Monash University’s School of Geography and Environmental Science in Melbourne.
Referring to the satellite data gathered since 1979, he explained that “Last November was the hottest November we’ve ever seen, November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen.”
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stated last December that the 2000-2009 period was definitely the hottest since scientists began recording data in 1850. They also considered 2009 as possibly the fifth hottest year recorded.
The UK Met Office, Britain’s official weather forecaster, said extreme winter conditions like this year’s—which is one of the coldest experienced by the country in the last 30 years—could become rare in the future because of the rising trend in global warming.
