Power Ranger Who Died

Each of the last 20 years has been warmer than the long-term global average, and with the 1998 record, the 10 warmest years of the century have all occurred since 1983, seven of them in this decade.

Temperatures have risen by 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, comparing with its beginning. While this increase may not seem very high, distributed across the planet is a tremendous amount of energy. It is also a huge spike in temperature. While temperatures vary greatly from site to site, day N'Diaye from hour to hour, the average temperature across the surface of the planet remains remarkably stable from year to year. When going up only a small fraction of a degree, as it has in recent years, establishing a record. That's why as the heat wave in 1998-about everything one degree F above the average of 1961 to 1990 - impresses and worries scientists. "That number is staggering," said climatologist Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main climatological information centers worldwide.

The amazing record of 1998 marks a powerful long-term trend. "The rapid warming of the last 25 years undermines the argument of skeptics about the greenhouse effect, which have argued that most of the global warming occurred early in this century, when greenhouse gases were increasing more slowly-in fact, faster warming is occurring exactly when expected, "according to the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, James E. Hansen.

In late 1998, the scientist Thomas Widley National Center for Atmospheric Research and two colleagues published the results of rigorous statistical tests of the last 115 years of temperature data. They compared data collected with the climate system models made by computer to determine whether a cyclical rise in the intensity of the sun, could have caused the warming global, rather than the greenhouse gases produced by humans. Concluded that the climate should have been six times more sensitive to solar changes what is considered realistic to allow the warming trend. "These results provide another important piece in the puzzle of climate change, further strengthening our confidence that there has been a discernible human influence on climate."