Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weather: U.N. (Reuters)

The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.

There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.

"The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," Omar Baddour of the agency's World Climate Program told journalists in Geneva.

While most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to rise, Baddour said it was impossible to say with certainty what the second half of 2007 will bring.

"It is very difficult to make projections for the rest of the year," he said.

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Researchers gaze at cloud formations

from PhysOrg.com

Finnish researchers analyzing cloud formations say ozone destruction in the Earth's stratosphere might be occurring at a faster pace than thought.

Anatoli Bogdan and colleagues at the University of Helsinki say they reached that conclusion after studying low-temperature thin and subvisible cirrus, or SVC.

SVCs cover about one-third of the planet and affect global temperatures by reflecting sunlight back into space and preventing terrestrial heat from escaping into space. In addition, the scientists say ice particles in SVCs have a drying or dehydrating effect on the upper troposphere.[...]

Arctic summer ice anomaly shocks scientists

Satellite images acquired from Aug. 23 to 25 have shown for the first time dramatic openings -- over a geographic extent larger than the size of the British Isles -- in the Arctic's perennial sea ice pack north of Svalbard and extending into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole.

[via EurekAlert! - Science]

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