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  Today Online 29 Dec 06
What's the cause of the weather, man?
Freak storms, droughts may not be due to global warming
Heather Lima

FLOODING in the Horn of Africa, typhoons in Asia, drought in Australia, and the latest prediction is that Arctic ice may melt completely in the summer months as soon as 2040.

Extreme weather appears to be happening in every corner of the globe and signs of global warming seem more glaring.

But just how far the two are related, no one knows for sure. Scientists predict the Earth will warm by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Though climate change is nothing new, what is different is the possible impact of man in releasing carbon dioxide gases--which most scientists believe contribute to heating the atmosphere artificially--by burning fossil fuel and other activities.

This year was the sixth warmest year on record, according to the latest report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The warmest year so far was 1998, followed by 2005. Extreme temperatures were recorded around the world this year. Many European countries experienced the hottest autumn since records started being kept in the 17th century. Parts of the United States saw flooding and others saw heatwaves.

The Horn of Africa, hit by severe drought last year, became a humanitarian disaster zone in October and November this year, this time due to severe floods following heavy rainfall in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.

Typhoons wreaked record damage in South-east Asia. China suffered its worst typhoon season in a decade, which caused 1,000 deaths and damage worth US$10 billion ($15.3 billion). Typhoon Durian affected about 1.5 million people in the Philippines last month, with more than 500 dead and hundreds more missing.

But experts are reluctant to draw firm conclusions. "It is always difficult to talk about trends," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud, who declined to say if he believed freak weather was occurring more frequently.

Certainly, the pattern of ferocious Atlantic hurricane seasons, which peaked last year, was broken this year. Despite predictions to the contrary by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2006 saw near-normal seasonal activity.

Dr Gerry Bell, a forecaster at NOAA, said: "El Nino developed quickly and the atmosphere responded rapidly, reducing hurricane activity during an otherwise active era that began in 1995." El Nino is a periodic warming of ocean waters in central and eastern equatorial Pacific which influences weather around the world.

Predicting the weather remains an imprecise science, but assessing the aftermath is more certain. Natural disasters, including weather phenomena such as hurricanes Katrina and Stan, cost US$160 billion last year, according to the World Disasters Report published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The amount was more than double the decade's annual average.

Meanwhile, in October, a report spelt out the gloomiest prediction so far of the impact of global warming on the world economy. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said failure to tackle climate change would risk economic and social upheaval comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It could shrink the world economy by 20 per cent by 2050.

"Without action, droughts, floods and rising sea levels would mean that up to 200 million people could be displaced and become refugees," he said, calling for 1 per cent of global gross domestic product to be spent immediately on tackling climate change.

Global warming makes news headlines almost daily. Earlier this month, a report co-authored by the University of Washington's Cecilia Blitz claimed that if greenhouse emissions continue at the present rate, large areas of the Arctic would be totally ice-free in the summer months by 2040. He colleague Peter Rhines said: "The emerging global-warming signal seems to be more and more potent, more and more believable, and more and more certain."

According to Professor Martin Beniston of the University of Geneva, the "general scientific consensus is that human influence on the climate system has emerged as a key element of the observed warming since probably the 1960s".

But the WMO is not prepared at this time to say how far severe weather is caused by global warming. "The last report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) looked into possible links between climate warming and drought, rainfall and heatwaves, but we are still in a phase of doing more research to find the answer," said Mr Jarraud. The IPCC is expected to say more in another report due next year.

Whether human action causes global warming and the resulting catastrophic weather is not clear. If it does, then a consensus on remedial action should be reached, although this remains a distant possibility.

But if it is not man-made, there is little we can do about global warming apart from preparing policies to mitigate the very worst consequences.

Either way, the forecast is a bleak one.
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