THE NATURAL WORLD AROUND YOU
News about The World We Live In
WEEK ENDING May 27, 2000
YEAR TO DATE: HOT AND DRY - FORECAST:
HOT AND DRY
By Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2000 (ENS)
The four month period of January
through April this year was the warmest such period on record in the United
States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said
Friday.
In a year already marked in the U.S. by threats of record drought, wildfires
and huge tornadoes, the statistic is another warning that the effects of
global climate change are being felt across the country and around the
world.
This was the warmest January through April in 106 years of record keeping,
according to statistics calculated by NOAA's scientists working from the
world's largest statistical weather database. NOAA's National Climatic Data
Center in Asheville, North Carolina, holds data from record keeping that
goes back to 1894.
The preliminary data indicate that almost 70 percent of the U.S. was much
warmer than normal, while less than one percent of the country was much
cooler than normal.
The average temperature, at 44.3 degrees Fahrenheit (6.8 degrees Celsius),
was .3 degrees over the second warmest January-April, which occurred in
1990. Nevada had its second warmest April ever, Arizona had its third
warmest. New Mexico and Utah each experienced their sixth warmest Aprils.
The American southwest has been struck by a rash of wildfires in recent
weeks, with one blaze sweeping the north rim of the Grand Canyon and another
threatening the nation’s largest nuclear weapons lab in Los Alamos, New
Mexico. Set deliberately to clear underbrush, the fires spread quickly
through the ultra-dry forests.
Climate change may significantly reduce future crop yields in some U.S.
agricultural regions, says a new report by the Center for Health and the
Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, the Center for Climate Systems
Research at Columbia University and Iowa State University.
The report, to be released Thursday at a congressional briefing in
Washington, DC, will reveal potential increases in outbreaks of crop
diseases, pests and weeds. The economic costs of agricultural production may
rise in response to extreme weather events like heat waves, torrential rains
and flooding, and droughts.
Across the globe, land and ocean temperatures in April continued to average
well above the 1880-1999 long term mean.
The temperature averaged about 0.51 degrees Celsius above normal for both
land and ocean surfaces, slightly cooler than the record warm temperatures
recorded during the 1998 El Niño episode. Sea surface temperatures
averaged
0.35 degrees Celsius above the long term mean, the sixth warmest April since
1880.
The much warmer than average global temperatures were largely due to the
extremely warm conditions observed over Northern Hemisphere land surfaces,
NOAA said. The global land temperature was 1.01 degrees Celsius above normal
in April, second only to the 1.27 degrees Celsius recorded in 1998.
Increasing signs of global warming prompted U.S. President Bill Clinton to
use a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council on Sunday to promote U.S.
action on climate change.
"Every member of Congress here will tell you that a huge portion of decision
makers in our country and throughout the world - and most troubling, in some
of the biggest developing nations - still believe you cannot have economic
growth unless you pour more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," Clinton
said. "There is nothing so dangerous as for a people to be in the grip of
a
big idea that is no longer true. It was once true that you had to put more
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to grow the economy, to build a middle
class, make a country rich. It is not true anymore."
Clinton warned that the U.S. must take the lead on addressing climate change
and other environmental problems to persuade other countries to do the same.
"There's no way in the world we'll be able to convince our friends in India
or China, which over the next 30 years will become bigger emitters of
greenhouse gases than we are, that they can take a different path to
development, and that we're not trying to keep them poor, unless we can
demonstrate that we have let this idea go and that we have evidence that a
different way will work," said Clinton.
Greenhouse gas emissions in the Northern hemisphere may have contributed to
environmental catastrophes in the Southern hemisphere. For example, UNICEF,
the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, said today that low rainfall during the
last two years has caused severe drought conditions in 11 Indian states. An
estimated 130 million people - 15 percent of the population - in more than
70,000 villages and 230 urban centers are at risk.
Apart from economic loss due to low agricultural production, loss of animal
wealth, inadequate nutrition and primary health care, the impact of the
drought is likely to retard the developmental process in children, UNICEF
warned.
In East Africa and South Asia, tens of millions of people are at risk from
persistent droughts. Across vast areas of both continents, crops have wasted
away, wells are dry, livestock are dying and the land has become a
desiccated sprawl of dust.
In 1999, the U.S. experienced one of its worst droughts ever recorded.
Almost two thirds of the country suffered severe and persistent heat waves,
killing 257 Americans and thousands of cattle in July alone.
This year, based on preliminary precipitation data, January-April 2000
ranked near the long term mean, NOAA reports. About eight percent of the
country was much wetter than normal, while about three percent of the
country was much drier than normal.
But just last week, the National Weather Service released a forecast calling
for a significant drought across much of the U.S. this summer.
In April, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proposed the creation
of a global alliance for water security, warning that the squeeze on global
water resources will tighten as populations grow, demand increases,
pollution continues and climate change accelerates.
"As competition for water intensifies, further disagreements over access and
use are likely to erupt," said Albright. "Unless properly managed, water
scarcity can be a major source of strife, as well as a roadblock to economic
and social progress."
Other forms of extreme weather are also taking a toll. In 1999, Hurricane
Floyd killed 78 people and about three million farm animals, causing an
estimated $6 billion in damages in North Carolina alone, the worst disaster
ever for that state.
"Polluting industries say that it will cost too much to tackle the problem
of global warming," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for the U.S.
Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG). "If we fail to curb global warming
pollution, we are flirting with disaster. The costs will only continue to
increase."
In April, US PIRG released a report illustrating the high costs of global
warming. For example, in the U.S., weather related natural disasters in the
1990s took almost 4,000 lives and caused almost $200 billion in economic
loss, including 450 lives and $14 billion in economic loss for 1999.
Worldwide, the weather disaster toll was more than 330,000 lives and more
than $625 billion in economic loss, including 52,000 lives and $68 billion
in economic loss for 1999.
On Sunday, Clinton said the U.S. must take action on global warming while
safeguarding the prosperity of Americans and people around the globe.
"We will reverse the course of climate change while enhancing, rather than
eroding, economic growth with new technologies and new sources of
alternative energy," Clinton pledged on behalf of the Democratic party.
The most recent weather statistics for the United States and the globe are
available at:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/research/2000/apr/apr00.html
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2000/2000L-05-22-06.html
***********************************************************
CHINA, U.S. PLEDGE COOPERATION ON CLIMATE
CHANGE
BEIJING, China, May 22, 2000 (ENS)
- The United States and China have signed a joint statement pledging stronger
cooperation on a range of efforts to
protect the environment and promote sustainable development, including
international efforts to combat global climate change.
The joint statement - signed in Beijing Friday by U.S. Ambassador Joseph
Prueher and Madame Zhu Lilan, China's Minister of Science and Technology -
is the latest result of the U.S.-China Forum on Environment and Development
co-chaired by U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji.