Climate change is responsible for “weather” records 2012

Melting sea ice off Greenland

This has been a record-breaking year in terms of heatwaves, drought, floods, hurricanes, melting Arctic ice. There are those who would say we have always had extreme weather events and they have nothing to do with human-induced global warming. But the World Meteorology Organisation (WMO) is in no doubt that all these are signs that global climate change is already happening. The experts brought out their provisional climate report for 2012 in Doha, where the climate talks have so far failed to make any progress.

This has been a year of above-averge temperatures and extreme weather events, according to the WMO. A taste of (climate) things to come, says Jeremiah Lengoasa, the Secretary General of the UN’s weather body. Forest fires in the northern hemisphere, record temperatures in Europe and the USA, a cooler summer in northern Europe but an unusually hot one in the south of the continent. Drought in the USA,  parts of China, Brazil, floods in West Africa, Pakistan, Argentina and southern China, extremely cold winter in eastern Russia, a third season of super-strong hurricanes in the Atlantic , record sea ice minimum in the Arctic…. Lengoasa says climate change is no longer a threat for the future. It’s already here.

Experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events. This show flooding in Alice Springs, Central Australia, when I was there in 2008. Expecting the dusty “red centre”, I was surprised to meet with floods and frogs!