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It is predicted that future climate changes will include further global warming (i.e., an upward trend in global mean temperature), sea level rise, and a probable increase in the frequency of some extreme weather events.

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Melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt they will desalinate the ocean. The desalinization of the gulf current will "screw up" ocean currents, which regulate temperatures. The stream shutdown or irregularity would cool the area around north-east America and Western Europe.

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Some impacts from increasing temperatures are already happening:

•Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.

Other effects could happen later this century, if warming continues:

•Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.

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Extreme Weather Events

We are now witnessing on a more regular basis are consequences of increasing global temperatures.

There are many extreme weather events that may be attributed to global warming:

•Extreme winter cold and snow fall
•Extreme storms

Extreme weather events in general are projected to increase as a result of global warming.

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As an example, the government of the Maldives - an archipelago of almost 1,200 coral islands located in the Indian Ocean with most islands lying just 1.5 meters above the sea level - is considering a purchase of land elsewhere in the world for a complete relocation of this nation, because of the fear that these islands will be totally flooded by rising sea levels.

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The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole, and everywhere in between. Globally, the mercury is already up more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius), and even more in sensitive polar regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future. They’re happening right now. Signs are appearing all over, and some of them are surprising. The heat is not only melting glaciers and sea ice, it’s also shifting precipitation patterns and setting animals on the move.

•Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
•Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
•Sea level rise became faster over the last century.
•Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
•Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.

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The global warming hypothesis originated in 1896 when Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, developed the theory that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would cause global temperatures to rise by trapping excess heat in the earth’s atmosphere.

In 1988, the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comprising more than two thousand scientists responsible for studying global warming’s potential impact on climate. According to the IPCC, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31 percent, methane by 151 percent, and nitrous oxide by 17 percent since 1750. Over the twentieth century, the IPCC believes that global temperatures increased close to 0.5 degree Centigrade (C), the largest increase of any century during the past one thousand years. The 1990s, according to IPCC data, was the warmest decade recorded in the Northern Hemisphere since records were first taken in 1861, with 1998 the warmest year ever recorded.

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A year of deadly record-smashing weather extremes from Nashville to Moscow, from the Amazon to Pakistan, ended with staggering deluges from California — “Rainfall records weren’t just broken, they were obliterated” — to Australia:

More than a year's rain fell in Carnarvon in just 24 hours this week. A monsoonal low hovering over the Gascoyne dumped a 24-hour record 204.8mm, smashing the previous record of 119.4mm set on March 24, 1923.

NASA reported that it was the hottest ‘meteorological year’ [December to November] on record and likely to be the hottest calendar year.

Meteorologist and former NOAA Hurricane hunter Dr. Jeff Masters reported, “The year 2010 now has the most national extreme heat records for a single year–-nineteen. These nations comprise 20% of the total land area of Earth. This is the largest area of Earth’s surface to experience all-time record high temperatures in any single year in the historical record.”

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1. An all-time record high in Los Angeles. 97 degrees is nothing compared to September 28. That day, downtown L.A. registered at 113 degrees, besting the old mark of 112 set in 1990.

2. Houston's hottest month ever. While Houston's residents are used to hot days, they've never seen heat like this, with an average temperature of 87.8 degrees in August, a new record for the hottest month in the city's history.

3. A new all-time high in Asia. Temperatures in Pakistan's ancient city of Mohenjo-daro reached a scorching 129 degrees on June 1, marking the hottest weather ever recorded in Asia, and the fourth-highest temperature in history.

4. An unprecedented heat wave in Russia. With smoke from burning peat-bogs clogging the muggy air, the heat in Moscow on August 6 broke the "psychological barrier" of 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Record heat in Sudan. While searing weather is common in Sudan, the 121-degree temperature recorded on June 25 in the city of Dongola was the hottest the country has ever seen. The previous record was set in 1987.

6. New all-time highs in the Middle East. U.S. troops in Iraq endured some of the most intense heat of the summer. The mercury hit a blistering 125.6 degrees Fahrenheit in July, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

7. The hottest month in world history — four times in a row. June 2010 was the warmest month ever recorded on planet Earth. The previous mark had been set in May. The mark before that had been set in April. The one before that in March.

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 Recent data from Antarctic ice cores indicates that carbon dioxide oncentrations are now higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years, which is as far back as measurements can now reach.

 2005 was the warmest year on record since atmospheric temperatures have been measured.
The ten warmest years on record have all been since 1990. In summer 2005, heat records were
broken in hundreds of U.S. cities.

 Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in
recorded history.

 In 2003, heat waves caused over 30,000 deaths in Europe and 1500 deaths in India.

 Since 1978, arctic sea ice has been shrinking by about 9 percent per decade.

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Record temperatures of well over 35 degrees Celsius were recorded all over Europe this week. On Jul. 20 Paris and Berlin registered 39 degrees. In Belgium, Jul. 19 was the hottest day ever in July, with 37 degrees.

The July maximum temperature record was also broken in Britain. The mercury reached 36.5 Celsius at the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The previous record for July, 36 degrees, was set in Epsom in 1911.

The heat wave has led to several deaths across Europe.

French minister of health Xavier Bertrand said Jul. 19 that at least nine people had died this summer, victims of the heat.

In Spain, at least two heat wave deaths have been reported. Both victims were bricklayers, who died at work. In Germany and the Netherlands, four people died of cardio-vascular complications provoked by the heat.

But this year's death toll remains low compared to some 35,000 people who died across Europe in the heat wave of 2003. That year 15,000 people, mostly the elderly, died in France.

Gerstengarbe said that over the last century temperatures in Germany rose 0.8 degrees. "Over the next 75 years, we expect a warming of between 1.8 to 3..6 degrees for our region."

The heat is also taking its toll on agriculture, and affecting the generation of electricity, especially in nuclear power plants.

The lack of fresh water for the nuclear plants' cooling systems has led German private electricity suppliers to slow down their generators.

In France, the state-owned Electricité de France (EdF) was allowed to continue to drain hot water from the cooling system into rivers, although the water temperatures exceeded the limits imposed by environmental authorities. But output has had to be lowered.

EdF has been importing electricity to compensate the nuclear power plants' lower performance. Eighty percent of electricity generated in France is produced by nuclear power plants.

In Italy, hydroelectric plants have had to slow down due to a shortage of water in rivers.

European agriculture has also been hit by the heat wave and the drought.

In Germany, president of the association of farmers Gerd Sonnleitner told the press that this year's harvest on cereals would be 10 to 15 percent lower than in 2004, for which figures are available. "We had excellent expectations, but the heat and the drought have destroyed them."

In France farmers say the heat has damaged harvests. Livestock breeders said they have been forced to exhaust their forage reserves.

"This is the fourth successive drought we are suffering," Jean-Luc Poulain, commissioner for risks management at the French Association of Farmers told IPS. "We have not been able to reconstitute our stocks. And the situation gets worse by the day."

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Total heat records now stand at 671 record highs broken this month (plus another 293 record high minimums, for a total near 1,000).



The temperatures are really extreme, in many cases exceeding what you'd normally see at the peak of the summer. Grandfather Mountain, NC hit 80 yesterday (update, they hit it again today) - their warmest ever in April and only 3 degrees away from their all-time record high (for any month)! At Central Park they broke their daily record set in 1929.

Mid 90s have been seen by official stations; 95 was recorded at Leesburg and Louisa in Virginia, and it rose to 94 at Hagerstown, Maryland this afternoon - just over the Pennsylvania border! As they say about the Desert Southwest, "it's a dry heat" though - relative humidities are as low as 9% at Petersburg, Virginia.

- Only one day (out of more than 41,000) has ever been warmer than this, this early. We hit 86 F at Penn State yesterday, April 6th; only March 31, 1989 saw a warmer temperature (87) before April 15th!

- We don't normally get this warm any time of year. The 86-degree reading is 5 degrees above our normal high during the peak of the Summer in July/August.

- Last night was much warmer than a normal Summer night. Joe Bastardi's weather station south of town (which I installed and am confident that is sited correctly) did not fall below 74 degrees last night -- 12 degrees above the normal overnight low at Summer's peak, making for a +34 temperature departure for the 24-hour period.

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