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Predictions. Extremes of hot and cold

Save for some lone voices in the wilderness, the worlds carries on ignoring climate change.   The Kyoto Agreement?   Seemingly consigned to the waste-paper basket.    Two reports out today highlight what lies before in the climate-stakes unless we do something - like NOW!

Newspaper report #1:

"Global temperatures are climbing so rapidly that by 2040 Britain will spend up to a fifth of its summer months in an extreme heatwave, a new report warns.

Unless something dramatic is done to curb the volume of greenhouse gas emissions widely regarded as responsible for climate change, then conditions currently regarded as “extreme” will become the “new normal” in the UK and most of the world by the end of the Century, the findings say.

Under this scenario, by the end of the century Spain and France are likely to be experiencing extreme temperatures during 80 per cent of their summer - across much of June, July and August - with the UK slightly lower at between 50 and 60 per cent, according to Dim Coumou, the lead author of the study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

For Britain, this would mean the July 2006 heatwave - the hottest month since records began in 1659 with an average temperature of 17.8C - would become normal."


Newspaper report#2:

"In Australia the Climatic Change Report August 2013 assessment of the potential impact of climate change on the ski industry in New Zealand and Australia predicted that Australian resorts will experience between 57 and 78 per cent of the current maximum snow depth and that will reduce to 21 to 29 percent come 2090.

New Zealand's snow days will reduce from 125 days of above 30-centimetre base, to 52 to 110 days in 2090. By that time Australia will have anything from zero to 75 skiable days each winter."



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