2008 will be coolest year of the decade 

Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists

James Randerson

guardian.co.uk, Friday December 5 2008 15.00 GMT

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing however, say climate scientists at the Met Office. "Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends."

Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure. "You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, its not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long, we are used to warm years," he said, "Even in the 80s [this year] would have felt like a warm year."

And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens's time - without human-induced warming there would have been a one in a hundred chance of getting a year this hot. "For Dickens this would have been an extremely warm year," he said. On the flip side, in the current climate there is a roughly one in 10chance of having a year this cool.

The Met Office predicted at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be cooler than recent years because of a La Niña event - characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle. The Met Office had forecast an annual global average of 14.37C.

Allen was presenting the data on this year's global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. "[The figure] will differ from it, but it won't differ massively," said Stott, "We would expect the number to go up rather than down because the early parts of the year were still under the La Niña conditions."

Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the tenth hottest year on record. The hottest was 1998 - which included a very strong El Niño event - followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002. The data are a combination of measurements from satellites, ground weather stations and buoys which are compiled jointly by the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

In March, a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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I've long wondered whether the global warming issue was fact or fiction. I have come to believe that there is some truth, and a lot of Henny Penny reaction to it. I don't believe that the world will end in my lifetime, barring some lunatic with a nuclear device or a meteor hitting us dead center. I can't personally do anything about either of those scenarios, so I leave the worry about what to do to others. I think that there are some who decided that they needed to have a forum on which to make their legacy and are making more of the problem than there really is. Of course, there are people who have their heads in the sand and refuse to admit there are problems. Those people are part of the problem. No one on the extreme edges do the issue any good. 

Mankind may be responsible for some climate change, but I don't believe we are responsible for all of it. I believe that there are cycles in nature, and warming and cooling cycles are part of it. It's part of nature and we have to figure out what we can fix and what to leave alone.

We as a species have left our mark on Earth - whether good or bad. I'm not smart enough to know what is a permanent problem and what needs a fix. Again, something I leave to others. I believe that mankind has an obligation to be kind to the environment and we should take steps to be as green as practical. We need to understand that it's all too easy to harm our environment. I do believe that we need to take to heart part of the physician's code: First, do no harm.

However, when we do realize that we've hurt our environment,  I believe that we must do what we can to correct the problem. We should be looking toward alternative forms of energy.  I hope that the people who have influence in this world are also looking in this direction.

The only problem is, when you are talking a new form of anything, it's usually more expensive that what you currently have. Take for example cars. I'd love to see more hybrids on the road, but they are new and tend to be beyond the budget of the very people who need them. Smaller cars that get great mpg's tend to be not as safe as larger vehicles. And truth to tell, I'm at an age where I'm looking for some creature comforts, which don't usually appear in the smaller, more efficient vehicles.

I'm looking to the automotive industry to bring out vehicles that Americans want, instead of what the industry thinks we want. Why can't we have larger, safer vehicles that are also fuel efficient? And at a cost more people can afford? Not everyone will be able to buy a new car every time they are looking to replace the current model in their driveway or garage. We are slowly replacing the old, inefficient gas guzzlers, but are they at a price the average wage earner can afford? The people in my circle are driving newer vehicles, but most are purchased used, not new, and certainly not as carbon footprint friendly as the PC police would have us drive.

It ought to be telling to the automotive industry that foreign cars are not in the financial situation that the American industry is suffering from. The Big Three should be looking to their foreign competitors to see what they are doing that The Big three could bring to their plants.

Maybe then the American automotive industry will the the leaders in making vehicles that will do no harm to the environment and that will be environmentally and bank account friendly.