Here's the story from the AP wire:
Decade of 2000s was warmest ever, scientists say
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley, Ap Special Correspondent
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2 hrs 1 min ago
It
dawned with the warmest winter on record in the United States. And when
the sun sets this New Year's Eve, the decade of the 2000s will end as
the warmest ever on global temperature charts.
Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead.
Through
10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the
planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under
that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases,
the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought,
weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world
humanity has created for itself over millennia.
As
the decade neared its close, the U.N. gathered presidents and premiers
of almost 100 nations for a "climate summit" to take united action, to
sharply cut back the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
told them they had "a powerful opportunity to get on the right side of
history" at a year-ending climate conference in Copenhagen.
Once again, however, disunity might keep the world's nations on this side of making historic decisions.
"Deep
down, we know that you are not really listening," the Maldives' Mohamed
Nasheed told fellow presidents at September's summit.
Nasheed's
tiny homeland, a sprinkling of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean,
will be one of the earliest victims of seas rising from heat expansion
and melting glaciers.
On remote islets of Papua New Guinea, on Pacific atolls, on bleak
Arctic shores, other coastal peoples in the 2000s were already making
plans, packing up, seeking shelter.
The warming seas were growing more acid, too, from absorbing carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas in an overloaded atmosphere. Together, warmer waters and acidity will kill coral reefs and imperil other marine life — from plankton at the bottom of the food chain, to starfish and crabs, mussels and sea urchins.
Over the decade's first nine years, global temperatures
averaged 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees F) higher than the 1951-1980
average, NASA reported. And temperatures rose faster in the far north
than anyplace else on Earth.
The decade's final three summers melted Arctic sea ice more than ever before in modern times. Greenland's
gargantuan ice cap was pouring 3 percent more meltwater into the sea
each year. Every summer's thaw reached deeper into the Arctic
permafrost, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a
global-warming gas.
Less ice meant less
sunlight reflected, more heat absorbed by the Earth. More methane
escaping the tundra meant more warming, more thawing, more methane
released.
At the bottom of the world, late in the decade, International Polar Year research found that Antarctica,
too, was warming. Floating ice shelves fringing its coast weakened,
some breaking away, allowing the glaciers behind them to push ice
faster into the rising oceans.
On six
continents the glaciers retreated through the 2000s, shrinking future
water sources for countless millions of Indians, Chinese, South
Americans. The great lakes of Africa were shrinking, too, from higher
temperatures, evaporation and drought. Across the temperate zones,
flowers bloomed earlier, lakes froze later, bark beetles bored their
destructive way northward through warmer forests. In the Arctic,
surprised Eskimos spotted the red breasts of southern robins.
Story Cont. Here
2000s Were Warmest Decade
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