Planetary Ruin

As the death toll from a powerful winter storm rose to 30 across six states, utility crews worked on Monday to restore electricity to about 330,000 Missouri households and businesses.

Crews hoped to take advantage of moderate weather expected Monday – with only a few lingering snow showers and flurries – to bring power back on before an expected drop in temperatures to the single digits Monday night.

The remains of the storm system streamed toward New England on Monday, shutting down numerous businesses, day care centers and schools in Maine with a mixture of sleet and snow that made roads treacherous.

Lower Michigan and parts of New England could see more than a foot of snow Monday, as rain fell from the lower Mississippi Valley up through the Ohio Valley, The National Weather Service said. On the back side of the storm, snow in Iowa closed some schools Monday.

Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday had been blamed for at least 15 deaths in Oklahoma, six in Missouri, five in Iowa, two in Texas and one each in New York and Maine.

Seven of the Oklahoma deaths occurred in one accident, in which a minivan carrying 12 people slid off an icy highway Sunday and struck an oncoming truck, the Highway Patrol said. All of the van’s occupants were adult residents of Mexico, who were traveling from Arizona to North Carolina, Highway Patrol Capt. Chris West said.

As the storm blew across the lower Great Lakes and northern New England on Monday, a layer of heavy ice up to a half-inch thick knocked out power to more than 11,000 customers in northern New York and was blamed for dozens of traffic accidents, authorities officials said.

The ice accumulation also blacked out at least 1,000 utility customers in New Hampshire, but for the northern part of the state, ski areas were celebrating their first significant snowfall of the season.

Most of the Missouri power outages – the majority in the state’s southwest corner – were caused by the weight of freezing rain snapping tree branches and dropping them onto power lines, officials said.
 
Guardsmen went door to door checking on the health and safety of residents in the hardest hit parts of the state and helping to clear slick roads. The temperature in the St. Louis area hovered just above the freezing mark Monday morning, and the wind chill was 24 degrees, the weather service said.

Amtrak canceled Sunday service between Kansas City and St. Louis because of to fallen trees and other debris on railroad tracks. Airlines in Texas canceled 415 flights because of the weather Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. On Monday, 100 more departures at the airport were canceled.

In the St. Louis region, about 150,000 customers remained without power Sunday afternoon.

About 122,000 customers lacked power in Oklahoma as of Sunday night, the state Department of Emergency Management said. Authorities said it could be up to a week before power is fully restored. A gymnasium roof collapsed under the weight of ice and snow at Del City, Okla., but no one was inside, authorities said.

Late Sunday, President Bush declared a federal disaster for Oklahoma because of the storm.

Elsewhere, a weekend cold snap that had worried citrus growers and other farmers in California produced rare freezing temperatures Monday in southern Arizona. The 8 a.m. reading in Phoenix was 29, the weather service said.

During the weekend, the cold had frozen water pipes in the Phoenix area and flooded shelters with homeless people.

“This is something that we don’t think about much here,” said Ken Kroski, spokesman for the Phoenix Water Services Department, which was flooded with calls about burst pipes.

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Tony Blair has told Sky News he will not give up long-haul holiday flights to help combat climate change.

In an exclusive interview with Sky’s Julie Etchingham, he argued the fight against global warming did not require unreasonable sacrifices.

The Prime Minister was interviewed as part of Sky News’ Green Britain week – a look at climate change in the UK.

Mr Blair rejected the need to set a personal example on greenhouse gases by taking breaks closer to home, insisting science was the key to tackling the problem.

“I think that what we need to do is to look at how you make air travel more energy efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less,” he said.

Mr Blair cautioned against setting people “unrealistic targets”, adding: “It’s like telling people you shouldn’t drive anywhere.”

But Greenpeace campaigner Emily Armistead said: “Tony Blair is crossing his fingers and hoping someone will invent aeroplanes that don’t cause climate change.

“But that’s like holding out for cigarettes that don’t cause cancer. Hoping for the best isn’t a policy, it’s a delusion.”

One of Mr Blair’s own advisers, Jonathon Porritt, said the PM had shown a “complete failure to lead” for being “patchy and muddle-headed” on the climate change issue.

But he was defended by Environment Secretary David Miliband, who insisted that for the PM to deny himself foreign holidays would be no more than “gesture politics”.

A Downing Street press briefing was dominated by questions on climate change after Sky News’ report.

Faced with suggestions Mr Blair was telling the public it was futile to change their behaviour, his spokesman said: “The Prime Minister’s approach always has been that you can’t address the problems of climate change by hurting the domestic or the world economy.

“Are you going to stop tourism to developing countries that will then harm those developing countries?”

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Last year was the warmest on record for the United States, with readings pushed over higher than normal by the unusual and unseasonably warm weather during the last half of December.   Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center listed the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states last year as 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 2.2 degrees warmer than average and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.

Worldwide, the agency said, it was the sixth warmest year on record.

In December the Center had predicted that 2006 would be the United States’ third warmest year, but unusual readings later that month pushed the year into first place.

The Center said it is not clear how much of the warming is a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change and how much resulted from the current El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

El Nino conditions occur every few years in the Pacific and can affect climate around the world, including producing warmer conditions in the United States.

The average U.S. and global temperature are both about 1 degree warmer than at the start of the 20th century, a change many scientists attribute to gases released into the atmosphere by industrial processes.

The temperature data was collected from a network of more than 1,200 stations across the country.

The climate center said the unusual warmth in early winter reduced residential energy needs by 13.5 percent compared to average conditions for the season.

While December started cold, spring-like conditions reigned in the eastern states during the last half of the month, making it the nation’s fourth warmest December. Five states had their warmest December on record _ Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire. No state was colder than average in December.

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A powerful, mysterious smell of gas wafted through much of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey on Monday, forcing building evacuations and a temporary suspension of commuter train service before dissipating by mid-afternoon.

Officials were quick to stress that the natural gas-like odor was not dangerous, but at least 19 people went to hospital suffering minor complaints and its wide extent provoked jitters in a city that is constantly reminded of the September 11 attacks.

Twelve people were taken by ambulance to New York hospitals by emergency workers responding to calls from people complaining of upset stomachs, dizziness or difficulty breathing, a Fire Department spokesman said.

“It was all minor,” said the spokesman, though he added a total of 409 fire trucks and hook and ladder rigs were scrambled to investigate the fumes — about six times more than during a normal period.

Seven people went to the hospital seeking treatment in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York, although New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the odor was not dangerous and no unusual gas leaks had been found.

“It may just be an unpleasant smell, but at this point we do not know any more than that. The one thing we are confident about is, it is not dangerous,” Bloomberg told a news conference.

“The city’s air sensors do not report any elevated level of natural gas,” he said.

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They bombarded 911 with calls, crowded the sidewalks in front of evacuated buildings and tuned to the news for word of what was happening. The question on the minds of many New Yorkers on Monday morning was: “What’s that smell?”

A natural gas-like odor hung over much of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey, confounding authorities. The smell seemed to be gone by early afternoon.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no indication the air was unsafe. “It may just be an unpleasant smell,” he said. He said sensors did not show an unusually high concentration of natural gas, and Con Edison reported it found no gas leaks.

The mayor said the smell may have been caused by a leak of a substance called mercaptan that is added to natural gas for safety reasons to give it a recognizable odor. By itself, natural gas is odorless.

Some commuter trains running between New Jersey and Manhattan were suspended for about an hour as a precaution. A few city schools were briefly evacuated. Some apartment dwellers were advised to close their windows.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said there was nothing to suggest terrorism.

“That smell was stinking. It smelled like, toxic,” said Alfred Stewart, 47, who lives in an apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea section. He said it smelled like a mix of oil and kerosene: “You stayed in it and held it enough, you probably would have got dizzy from it.”

The Fire Department began getting calls around 9 a.m. Con Edison said it fielded 700 calls from people worried about the smell, from as far north as Washington Heights to as far south as Greenwich Village and as far east as Lexington Avenue.

Con Edison spokesman Chris Olert said more than 60 utility workers fanned out across Manhattan’s West Side but found no indication of a gas leak.

Norman Thomas High School on East 33rd Street was evacuated for about a half-hour.

Susan Badger, a retiree who lives in Chelsea, said she left her apartment building to escape the smell. “If it’s throughout the whole city, it seems that it must be a lot of gas. It’s really extreme,” she said.

New York City is no stranger to odd smells.

In 2005, a maple syrup aroma spread across Manhattan twice within a matter of weeks. Environmental officials sent teams into neighborhoods where the calls originated but found nothing dangerous and could not explain the smell.

Last August, seven people were treated for headaches and nausea after a gaseous odor was reported in Queens and Staten Island. Its source remains a mystery.

Also Monday morning, a large part of downtown Austin, Texas, was shut down for several hours after more than 60 birds were found dead in the street. The cause of the deaths was unclear, but authorities said there was no threat to people.

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Several blocks of Congress Avenue have been closed off to traffic because a large number of dead birds — reportedly as many as several dozen — have been found in the area. And if you work in the area, you’re being asked to stay home from work until at least noon.

Congress Avenue and one block on either side of the street is shut down from Cesar Chavez to 11th Street until approximately noon. That’s because an unusually large number of dead birds were found Monday morning, with most of them concentrated on 9th Street.

The birds are now being collected by workers in hazardous-materials suits and will be sent to another agency for further testing to try to find out why they died.

“What they are doing is going into the area where the birds are located and gathering additional samples, both from the birds and anything else they can find in that area,” said Mike Frick with the Austin Fire Department.

The fire department was called out to the area around 3 a.m. on Monday to test if there had been a gas or chlorine leak, but nothing of that nature was found. However, further precautionary testing is ongoing, and fire officials are requesting that individuals that work in this area not to come in until further notice.

“What the police department has done at this time is shut down Congress [Avenue] at First/Cesar Chavez, as well as one block on either side. We are asking people that work in the area not to come in, because they are not allowed in the area,” said Toni Chovanetz with the Austin Police Department.

Several different groups are on the scene, including APD, AFD and the 6th Civil Support Team. That team supports local first-responders and helps determine the nature of an emergency situation.

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Blue Mountain lays off 1,300 as warm weather forces first winter closure in history of Ontario’s biggest ski resort

Ontario’s largest ski resort has laid off 1,300 workers after closing down its ski operations in the middle of the winter season for the first time in the resort’s 65-year history.

“We’re trying to make the best of things so that guests who still come to Blue will have a good time, but it’s pretty tense,” said Kelly O’Neil, a spokeswoman at Blue Mountain Resort, yesterday. Officials said they had no choice after a run of unseasonably warm weather that has some wondering if winter will appear this year at all.

In Toronto, yesterday’s high hit a record 11C, smashing the previous Jan. 5 high of 10.1C set in 1997.

Mind you, that’s still got some way to go before breaking the record for January’s hottest day – 17.6C – set Jan. 13, 2005.

Yesterday’s record, which was set around 7 a.m., came on the heels of the warmest January evening in 167 years.

Until then, the warmest night in Toronto had been on Jan. 1, 1988 at 7.3C. But on Thursday night, the mercury never dropped below 8C.

The laid-off workers at Blue Mountain, who are full-time seasonal workers and year-round part-time employees, have been told their services won’t be needed for three weeks, although they’ll be called back earlier if the weather turns cold and snowmaking operations can start up again. They include housekeeping staff, restaurant workers and ski lift operators.

The resort has had spells of unseasonably warm weather in past winters, but until this year has always had enough snow to stay open.

This could also be the first year that Toronto doesn’t open its ski hills.

In Toronto, two city-run ski hills that were to have opened on Dec. 18 remain closed, said Don Boyle, director of community recreation, costing the city some $300,000 in revenue. But, he added, money has been saved on expenditures.

“Given the weather forecast, we don’t see us getting the ski hills open until Jan. 14,” he said. “If it’s much later than that we would likely not open at all.”

Even the York Regional Police Marine Unit has set a record for the latest date one of its vessels, the Naawij, a 26-foot Sea-swirl boat, has remained on the water. It continues to patrol Lake Simcoe to ensure boaters are operating safely.

In most years, much of Lake Simcoe is frozen over by this time and the ice dotted with the huts of ice fishers.

But just because people are out boating doesn’t mean winter has been cancelled, said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist.

“If you look at the five-day forecast you’d see that the S word is there,” he said. “We’re going to have snow next week.”

That may turn out to be an empty promise – at least for Toronto.

Temperatures are expected to drop to a high of about 4C Sunday, followed by a chance of flurries Monday and Tuesday. But that’s nowhere near seasonal norms.

“It’s really quite unusual – we know the weather is strange, but it is so obvious, it’s so dramatically different,” Phillips said. “Jan. 15 is usually when winter’s half over – and it hasn’t even begun yet.”

But Phillips isn’t giving up on Old Man Winter just yet.

“Just because we haven’t had winter doesn’t mean we should raise the white flag yet,” said Phillips, adding, “maybe we’ll be counting snowflakes in May.”

“We think that there will still be snow here and people will be cursing the weather… Don’t necessarily put away your snow tires or hang up your ski lift because the snow will still be coming.”

Whatever, Blue Mountain still plans to reopen some of the runs next Wednesday. Despite balmy temperatures, the resort opened three of its 35 runs Dec. 28 thanks to high-tech snow making equipment, which can cover half a hectare with 30 centimetres of snow in 16 minutes. Until this year it has always managed to hoard enough snow to stay open once the season was underway.

“This winter we didn’t get the low temperatures to build up a good snow base on the slopes,” said O’Neil.

Room occupancy was down 40 per cent during the all-important week between Christmas and New Year and with only three runs open, the resort could only accommodate a small fraction of the 15,000 skiers a day who usually ski there at that time of year.

Colder weather would also be good news for outdoor skaters, who have struggled to find outdoor ice.

“Mel Lastman Square is quiet during the day,” said Boyle. “Any other year it would be packed right now with people and families skating.”

Although some of the city’s outdoor artificial ice rinks have occasionally been closed because of soft ice, they’ve held up relatively well, he said. However, none of the natural ice rinks have opened.

Ice may be having a hard time forming, but that’s just fine for Toronto’s rats and mice.

“The fact that it’s a milder winter means less rats and mice are dying, which means more are surviving for one more breeding,” said Michael Goldman of Purity Pest Control Limited in Thornhill.

Without the usual snow and ice, easy access to dumpsters and garbage has made it easier to forage for food and improved their survival rates, he said. Carlo Panacci of Cain Pest Control in Toronto thinks we’re likely to see more rodents, and even insects, in the spring, since the cold weather isn’t keeping their numbers in check.

“We can expect to see more mice and more creatures in general,” said Panacci. “We just might not see as many polar bears.”

But zoologist Mark Engstrom doesn’t think increased temperatures results in more rodents. The University of Toronto professor points out that population growth of mice and rats has more to do with availability of food, rather than temperature.

“Their populations go up and down naturally – I don’t think it has to do with warming trends,” said Engstrom, also the curator of mammals at the Royal Ontario Museum.

When it comes to mammals, he said, the most visible effects of global warming can be seen in the Arctic. There, hunting season for polar bears is being shortened because they typically hunt only on sea ice and rarely on land.

Evolutionary biologist Spencer Barrett, however, doesn’t think you need to look far to see the effects of global warming, just look to the border. There, you’ll notice a northward spread of invasive species from the United States, which in the past would have been stopped by frost and bad weather.

“They’re following the warmer climate – lots of things are shifting their range and moving north,” said Barrett, who is the Canada research chair at the University of Toronto. “We see possums in Ontario now and we didn’t about 50 years ago because they’ve come up from the south.”

Just look at British Columbia, where beetles are chewing up vast areas of forests, he said. That’s occurring because the normal winter conditions that prevented them from reproducing are no longer there and milder weather means you’re getting more generations of beetles per year.

Elsewhere, weather is wreaking havoc in a different way.

Cold weather across northern and eastern India has killed more than 100 people in the past week, forcing the closure of schools , as well as the delivery of firewood to the homeless. Yesterday, the temperature in New Delhi dropped to 4 C, the lowest of the winter.

In Bangladesh, at least 56 people, mostly beggars and homeless, died during the cold snap. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, 34 people died as night-time temperatures dropped to freezing, making life miserable for those on the streets.

In the eastern state of Bihar, thousands of homeless people crowded around bonfires – at least 35 people have died in the impoverished state in the last week. In neighbouring Jharkhand, 11 people have died.

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Chilly northern Europe could reap big benefits from global warming, while the Mediterranean faces crippling shortages of both water and tourists by the middle of the century, according to the first comprehensive study of its effects on the continent.

Fewer in the north would die of cold, crops there would boom and the North Sea coast could become the new Riviera, an analysis to be approved by the European Commission next week shows. But the annual migration of rich northern Europeans to the south could stop – with dramatic consequences for the economies of Spain, Greece and Italy.

A sixth of the world’s tourists – 100m people annually – head south within Europe for their holidays, spreading €100bn ($130bn) of largesse with them. “The more tourists stay home or go to other destinations, the larger the distributional impact in Europe will be,” says the paper, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

While fewer people will perish of cold in the north, tens of thousands more will die of heat in the south. As many as 87,000 extra deaths a year would occur annually by 2071, assuming a three degree centigrade temperature rise. If efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions limit the rise to 2.2 degrees, additional mortalities would be 36,000 a year.

These numbers are dwarfed by predicted deaths and economic chaos in the developing world.

The Commission’s environment directorate compiled the report with data from Brussels’ satellite monitoring service and a review of the latest evidence.

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Put away your snow shovels and hang up your winter coats, New Yorkers. After all, it is the first week of January.

Record warm temperatures in New York City will cap off a strange week that’s seen cherry blossoms bloom in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C., multiple blizzards pummel Denver and other parts of the Midwest, and ski resorts in the northeast close their doors due to lack of snow and customers.

Forecasters are calling for temperatures to reach the upper 60s on Saturday, and maybe, just maybe strike 70. The previous record? A frosty 63 set back in 1950.

“The stretch of unseasonably warm weather is unprecedented and will be above normal for almost 30 days in a row now. Our normal is 38 and we’re going for some places as high as 70 on Saturday,” CBS 2 Meteorologist John Bolaris said.

And city residents have been enjoying the temperatures, which climbed to the mid-60s on Friday, and hovered in the mid-50s by late Friday night. Despite the light rain that dampened the day, many people still made it out to Central Park for a jog or bike ride, enjoying as much as they could of the wacky weather which has gone 27 days straight above normal.

But it hasn’t been fun for everyone, especially ski resorts and lodges who count on the cold to bring them customers during winter. On Plattekill Mountain, located about 2.5 hours north of New York City in Roxbury, ski trails remained closed on Friday and officials hoped to reopen them on Sunday. By 10 p.m., temperatures there were also in the low 50s. The mountain’s website urges ski-goers to “think snow!”

Robert Konefal owns the Pine Mill Arms Hotel in the Catskills and vented his frustrations about a winter unlike any other he’s ever seen.

“I’ve been here for 32 years and this is the worst winter I’ve ever seen,” he told WCBSTV.com. “I had three-day packages for New Year’s Eve and in my main building every single room canceled.”

Konefal estimates a 65 percent decrease in customers this season up to this point, and believes that number will jump even higher come the weekend of Martin Luther King’s birthday — one of their three busiest weekends of the year.

“I’m always booked, I was booked, it’s the first time I’ve ever had anyone in the main building cancel and these people booked in October. It’s really frustrating because I just put a new website up which cost me about $2,000. I just repackaged everything over from last year, changed all my packages around and I was really excited for the winter,” he said. “I brought two student employees in from Chile and the only thing I’ve got for them to do is clean out the cellar.”

Bolaris says the warm weather will also take its toll on those who have bad allergies. “I think it may be harsh for allergy sufferers believe it or not because the mold spores haven’t been killed off and microcosms are still breeding, so it could mean a harsh allergy season come this spring.”

The main force behind the record warmth is mostly related to El Nino, a weather phenomenon that occurs every several years and usually creates milder winter for the northeast. El Nino occurs when waters off the Peruvian coast continue to warm late in the year.

The phenomenon was first mentioned over 110 years ago by Peruvian fishermen who were perplexed by the strange weather, but even more baffled by a surplus of dead fish in the water. It was actually the warming of the water that killed the fish, and when the ocean warms like that, it has a global effect. “Normally, the stronger the El Nino, the more mild winter and less in the way of snow for the northern tier, northeast and mid-Atlantic. However in an El Nino year you can still have a superstorm either with snow or rain,” Bolaris says.

El Nino, Spanish for “the child,” was said to have received its name from the Peruvian fishermen because it occurs around Christmas time. The phenomenon typically lasts for several weeks, but can continue for months at a time. When that happens, the fishing industry can suffer serious damage, similar to what the fishermen experienced many moons ago.

And though many believe global warming is the cause of the craziness, Bolaris downplays that idea, but says it does play a part.

“Global warming is a concern, but i wouldn’t attribute this particular episode to purely global warming. The major part is El Nino, but it doesn’t not rule out that it could be the end effect of global warming,” he says.

Forecasters expect temperatures to fall back to earth sometime next week, with the chance for the first snowflakes of the season to fall via a flurry on Tuesday, but even that remains an uncertainty at this point. Still, Bolaris believes the strange pattern won’t last, and New Yorkers will still have plenty of cold and at least some snow to look forward to.

“This is exciting because it’s unique and different and you try to figure it out. Most people are looking at it like it’s either scary because it means global warming, or it’s warm weather and they’re not complaining because they’re into it,” Bolaris says. “Weather is cyclical and it will go back the other way. This is not the end of our winter — there will be plenty of winter to come.”

But for ski lodges, when it does come it may be too late. Konefal doesn’t believe he’ll be able to salvage the large amount of money he’s already lost this winter.

“Once you lose Christmas week or Martin Luther King week, it’s gone. We could be filled on Washington’s birthday week, they’re the three big ones, but you can’t really make it up at this point,” Konefal says. “Ski centers have been doing everything they possibly can and they just can’t do it. You just gotta suck it up.”

In the meantime, Central Park will likely be packed with people enjoying what should be the warmest and last bit of El Nino — for at least the week — before temperatures drop by the beginning of next week.

“Sometime in February and March when you’re shoveling snow in your driveway, this will all be a distant, warm memory,” Bolaris says.

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A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.

As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming Рalready blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf Рis set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Ni̱o, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records.

Professor Jones said: “El Niño makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees celsius per decade. Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record.”

The warning of the escalating impact of global warming was echoed by Jim Hansen, the American scientist who, in 1988, was one of the first to warn of climate change.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Hansen predicted that global warming would run out of control and change the planet for ever unless rapid action is taken to reverse the rise in carbon emissions.

Dr Hansen said: “We just cannot burn all the fossil fuels in the ground. If we do, we will end up with a different planet.

“I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it’s going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species.”

His call for action is shared by Sir David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who said that 2006 had shown that the “discussion is now over” on whether climate change is happening. Writing in today’s Independent, Sir David says progress has been made in the past year but it is “essential” that a global agreement on emissions is struck quickly. He writes: “Ultimately, only heads of state, working together, can provide the new level of global leadership we need to steer the world on a path towards a sustainable and prosperous future. We need to remember: action is affordable – inaction is not.”

The demands came as the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations agency that deals with climate prediction, issued a warning that El Niño is already established over the tropical Pacific basin. It is set to bring extreme weather across a swath of the planet from the Americas and south-east Asia to the Horn of Africa for at least the first four months of 2007.

El Niño, or “the Christ child” because it is usually noticed around Christmas, is a weather pattern occurring every two to seven years. The last severe El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, caused more than 2,000 deaths and a worldwide damage bill of more than £20bn.

The WMO said its latest readings showed that a “moderate” El Niño, with sea temperatures 1.5C above average, was taking place which, in the worst case scenario, could develop into an extreme weather pattern lasting up to 18 months, as in 1997-98. The UN agency noted that the weather pattern was already having “early and intense” effects, including drought in Australia and dramatically warm seas in the Indian Ocean, which could affect the monsoons. It warned the El Niño could also bring extreme rainfall to parts of east Africa which were last year hit by a cycle of drought and floods.

Its effect on the British climate is difficult to predict, according to experts. But it will probably add to the likelihood of record-breaking temperatures in the UK.

The return of El Niño

* Aside from the seasons, El Niño and its twin, La Niña, are the two largest single causes of variability in the world’s climate from year to year.

Both are dictated by shifts in temperature of the water in the tropical Pacific basin between Australia and South America. Named from the Spanish words for “Christ child” and “the girl” because of their proximity to Christmas, they lead to dramatic shifts in the entire system of oceanic and atmospheric factors from air pressure to currents.

A significant rise in sea temperature leads to an El Niño event whereas a fall in temperature leads to La Niña.

The cause of the phenomenon is not fully understood but in an El Niño “event” the pool of warm surface water is forced eastwards by the loss of the westerly trade winds. The sea water evaporates, resulting in drenching rains over South America, particularly Peru and Ecuador, as well as western parts of the United States such as California.

Parts of the western Pacific, including Indonesia and Australia, suffer drought. The effects can last for anything from a few weeks to 18 months, causing extreme weather as far afield as India and east Africa.

The co-relation with global warming is as yet unclear. Archaeological evidence shows El Niños and La Niñas have been occurring for 15,000 years. But scientists are investigating whether climate change is leading to an increase in their intensity or duration.

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