The year 2001 has been the second warmest on record and the trend toward higher mean global temperatures looks set to continue.

Officials at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva said that compared with the 1961-1990 average used as the basis for comparison, the global temperature in 2001 rose a fraction of a degree to 14 degrees centigrade (57.2 F).

The 2001 average temperature was second only to 1998 when temperatures rose under the impact of La Nina, the sister phenomenon to El Nino, both of which are caused by abnormal warming of surface water in the Pacific Ocean.

"If you look at the trend, you can see since the 1980s we have consistently remained above normal, with the temperatures continuing to increase slowly," Ken Davidson, director of the organization's World Climate Program, told a news conference on December 18. "So you would anticipate that this trend is most likely to continue."

World Meteorological Organization officials said the warming trend would be accompanied by further cases of extreme weather conditions -- both flooding and drought as well as sharp temperature variations. But it was not possible to predict where the weather events would occur.

The United Nations' experts have warned that rising emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide as a result of human activities are at least partially responsible for the temperature trend.

Leading industrialized countries, with the exception of the United States, are committed under the Kyoto Treaty on climate change to limiting emissions of greenhouse gases.

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Khorsheed.com - Jan 2002