NEWS

Earth’s Northern Hemisphere Has Record Warm Winter

03/16/2007

Earth's Northern Hemisphere Has Record Warm Winter

By Dan Hart

Bloomberg

The Earth's Northern Hemisphere had the warmest winter on record from December through February because of an early season El Nino, U.S. forecasters said.

A record warm January helped push the average combined land and sea temperature worldwide to the highest level since record- keeping began in 1880, or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.7 degree Celsius) more than the 20th century average, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina said in a report.

The data was released about two and a half months after a United Nations report said humans were ``very likely'' the cause of global warming and warned world temperatures and sea-levels will increase by the end of the century.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's data said land temperatures for the winter were the warmest on record, while the ocean-surface temperature tied for the second- warmest in 128 years of record keeping. The average ocean- surface temperature was 0.1 degree Fahrenheit cooler than the record set during the 1997-1998 El Nino.

An El Nino occurs every four to seven years as the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean turn warmer than normal, affecting rain and temperatures in parts of Asia and the U.S. The opposite phenomenon, La Nina, when Pacific waters turn cooler than normal, has replaced the El Nino that weakened in February, the NOAA said.

During the past century, global surface temperatures increased at a rate of about 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit each decade, though the rate has sped up to about three times that since 1976 to about 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, the U.S. agency said.