2007 seen as second warmest year as climate shifts - Reuters

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Source: Reuters

2007 seen as second warmest year as climate shifts

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Fri Jun 29, 6:17 AM ET

OSLO (Reuters) - This year is on track to be the second warmest
since records began in the 1860s and floods in Pakistan or a heatwave
in Greece may herald worse disruptions in store from global warming,
experts said on Friday.

"2007 is looking as though it will be the second warmest behind 1998,"
said Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's
University of East Anglia, which provides data to the U.N.'s
International Meteorological Organization.

"It isn't far behind ... it could change, but at the moment this looks
unlikely," he told Reuters, based on temperature records up to the
end of April.

Jones had predicted late last year that 2007 could surpass 1998 as
the warmest year on record due to rising concentrations of greenhouse
gases emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels and an El Nino warming
of the Pacific.

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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070629/sc_nm/climate_weather_dc