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UN: Past decade may be warmest on record
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At the second day of the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, the U.N. weather agency predicted this decade will very likely be the warmest on record. It also says 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest of the past 10 years.
In some regions, including parts of Africa and central Asia, this will probably be the year with the highest temperatures. However, the global projection is for 2009 to be about the fifth-warmest year on record.
The data was released as negotiators at the two-week Copenhagen summit work to craft a global deal to stem climate change.
Michel Jarraud, Secretary-general of World Meteorological Organization, said, "The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record. So, in other words, this decade is going to be warmer than the 1990s, which itself were warmer than the 1980s and so on. So it is likely to be the warmest on record."
The WMO's data is based on an analysis of global temperatures by scientists from three institutions -- NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in the U.S. and the University of East Anglia in the U.K.
Jarraud says the WMO data indicates the global temperature rise was already reaching the higher range of estimates.
Michel Jarraud said, "We are really on the higher end, on the pessimistic part of these ranges. So, actually, things are rather on the high side of the IPCC evaluation for the temperature increase. So, if nothing is done, we are going for much more than two degrees, if no decision is taken."
Scientists say that by 2020, industrial countries must slash carbon emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels to prevent the Earth's temperature from climbing two degrees, the maximum considered safe in order to avert the most dangerous global warming.
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