Many European countries had their warmest January since records began, weather offices said on Wednesday, bringing Dutch daffodils out early and triggering grassland fires in Hungary.
The reports came as scientists and government experts in the U.N. climate panel were meeting in Paris. They were expected to approve a report blaming human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, for most of the global warming in the past 50 years.
The report, to be issued Friday, was also expected to project rising temperatures in the 21st century that could bring more floods, more powerful storms, droughts and a rise in sea levels.
In the Netherlands, January temperatures were the highest since they were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Wednesday, averaging about 7.1 degrees Celsius — 2.8 degrees more than usual.
Already daffodils were flowering more than a month early in fields southwest of Amsterdam near the North Sea.
In Switzerland, where many ski resorts had been short of snow until heavy falls late last week, MeteoSwiss said January was set to be the warmest on record in Swiss cities.
Hungary also said January had been its warmest on record, with high temperatures and lack of rain causing fires on grasslands in eastern and southeastern Hungary.
Germany, Austria, Britain
The same story was echoed across Europe with Germany’s meteorological office DWD saying that January temperature averages of 4.6 degrees Celsius were some five degrees above long-term averages — making January 2007 together with January 1975, the warmest since records began in 1901.
In most parts of Austria, the temperatures were also the warmest since records began, according to Austria’s Central Institute of Meteorology.
Britain said this month could be the second warmest, with 1916 holding the record.
“Normally at this time of year the maximum temperature in central England is about six or seven degrees, and we are getting into double figures,” a spokesman for Britain’s Met Office said.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2006 was the sixth warmest year since records began with 1998 the warmest. All the 10 warmest years have been since 1994.
Some meteorologists predict that 2007 will be the warmest year on record because of a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the effect of the El Nino event that warms the eastern Pacific.
Warming caution
Meteorological offices across Europe were reluctant to say on the basis of just one month’s data that the high temperatures in January were due to global warming.
But Rob van Dorland of the Dutch institute KNMI said that: “We can expect to see more of that in the future ... and a shift from cold to warmer weather.”
The KNMI’s climate scenarios envisage more extreme weather such as heatwaves and storms in the Netherlands and northern Europe in the next few decades to 2050.
Earlier this month, hurricane-force winds swept across Europe, from Britain via the Netherlands to Poland, killing more than 40 people.
Thermometer-based temperature records began on a global basis around 1850, although Dutch records go back to 1706 and are among the oldest in the world.