It's been one of the warmest, most unusual winters in Canada that anyone can remember, but it appears it is not just us who are feeling it. British climate scientists say 2007 will likely be the world's hottest year ever recorded.
Britain's Meteorological Office says there is a 60 per cent probability that 2007 will break the record set by 1998. The global surface temperature is projected to be 0.54 degrees above the long-term average of 14 degrees C, beating the current record of 0.52 set in 1998.
The Met Office claims that over the previous seven years, its forecast of annual global temperature has been remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 锟紺.
The scientists blame persistently high levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity and El Nino for the global heat wave.
"This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," the office said Thursday.
El Nino is an ocean-atmosphere phenomenon marked by major temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The event occurs irregularly -- the last one happened in 2002 -- and typically leads to increased temperatures worldwide.
While this year's El Nino is not as strong as it was in 1997 and 1998, when it's combined with the steady increase of temperatures due to global warming, it may be enough to break the Earth's temperature record, said Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.
"Because of the warming due to greenhouse gases, even a moderate warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top," he said.
"El Nino is an independent variable," he said. "But the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth are almost certainly due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
El Nino can sometimes lead to milder weather, such as in the Atlantic Ocean, which is likely to see fewer hurricanes this year. But it can also increase the severity of weather-related disasters, such as typhoons in the Philippines or drought in Australia, which is already enduring the longest dry spell on record.
Here in Canada, the warm fall and winter has meant that many ski hills in Ontario and Quebec have had to close while many golf courses still haven't shut their gates. And while Alberta has seen plenty of snow, most of the country is dealing with much warmer than normal temperatures.
Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips expects the weather to be warmer than normal all the way until March across most of the country.
"It's really quite unusual. We know the weather is strange, but it is so obvious, it's so dramatically different,'' Phillips said Wednesday.
He recently told CTV's Canada AM that the way Canadians define winter -- big snowfalls, frozen lakes and huge snow banks -- may be changing.
"We clearly are warming up," he said. "We're still a country of ice and snow. It's just that the seasons seem to be getting shorter and we're just not getting as much snow as we used to."
