This is the time of year when people make predictions for the New Year. Scientists make predictions too, and meteorologists say that 2007 will be the hottest year ever recorded, all over the world.

There’s a 60% chance that 2007 will break the record set in1998, when the weather worldwide was 1.20 degrees warmer than normal. Britain’s Meteorological Office says, “This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world.”

The reason for this is that the El Nino, a warming trend that takes place in cycles in the Pacific Ocean, is now particularly strong. The last big El Nino occurred in 2002. These usually lead to warmer world temperatures. While this year’s El Nino isn’t as strong as it was in 1997 and ’98, the combination of an El Nino and greenhouse gas emissions means that there is a hot year ahead for all of us. In LiveScience.com, Raphael G. Satter quotes UK researcher Phil Jones as saying, “El Nino is an independent variable, but the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth is almost certainly due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Because of the warming due to greenhouse gases, even a moderate warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top.”

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk

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