1998 Was Hottest Year on Record

Monitor Wire Services

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency representing the groups, announced that the average global temperature has risen a little over 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.58 degree C) above the long-term average. Temperature records were broken in each of the past 18 months.

According to the WMO, the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 1980, with most of them in this decade.

This supports the findings of a study released earlier this year by the University of Massachussetts. As reported in the Monitor, the researchers examined tree rings to reconstruct global temperatures over the last 600 years. They found that three recent years in the 1990s were the warmest since at least AD1400.

Other startling effects noted by the meteorologists include greater ozone damage in the Southern Hemisphere. The hole in the ozone layer over Antartica lasted more than 100 continuous days, which was a new record. The area exceeded 10 million square miles for almost three weeks; in previous seasons, the area grew larger than 8 million square miles for only for a few days. As an average, the ozone deficiency over Antarctica was 25 percent higher than previous seasons in the 1990s.

Although global warming skeptics were quick to claim that the temperature rise was caused by 1997's strong and slow-to- leave El Nino, the WMO groups shared Obasi's alarm. Even if all nations completely stopped greenhouse gas production today, it takes about thirty years for the climate to respond.

Britain's offical Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, one of the most prominent members of the WMO, explained that this means all additional climate changes predicted for the next three decades are now in place because they are caused by fuel that was burned since 1968.

Researchers at Hadley say its latest data suggests that the planet is warming faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expected in 1996, when an increase of up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit was predicted by the end of the next century.

In their current forecast, Hadley meteorologists predict a runaway greenhouse effect that becomes unstoppable around the year 2050. Parts of the Amazon rainforest, eastern U.S. and southern Europe will become deserts. Massive storms like Hurricane Mitch will become commonplace. As a result, they predict that almost a billion people will suffer water shortages, and drought will destroy much of the cropland in the American midwest.

As a partial result of humankind's interference with nature, an estimated 32,000 people died and at least 300 million were displaced or forced to rebuild their homes, according to Worldwatch.

In the U.S., spring and summer heat and drought caused massive wildfire outbreaks in Florida and damage to crops in the South, and April-June was the driest period in 104 years of record in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. But overall there was above to much-above normal precipitation nationwide.

El Nino contributed to the late start of the 1998 Atlantic Hurricane season which under the influence of La Nina, ended as one of the deadliest in history with 14 named storms. Hurricane Mitch triggered massive flooding and landslides in late October that killed over 9,000 people, displaced another 2.4 million, and damaged or destroyed over 130,000 homes in Central America.

Worldwatch researchers say that 1998's "costliest" disaster was the flooding of China's Yangtze River which caused $30 billion in damage. About 3,700 people died and 223 million were displaced. Worldwatch added that "heavy summer rains are common in southern and central China, but the Yangtze Basin has lost 85 percent of its forest cover to logging and agriculture in recent decades. Wetlands have been drained and the river heavily dammed, greatly increasing the speed and severity of the resulting runoff."