- This year is likely to prove the hottest recorded in
Britain, The Independent can reveal.
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- It will also be memorable for continental Europe's hottest
summer, which exceeded previous records by such an enormous amount that
one of Britain's leading climate scientists is now prepared to attribute
its extreme heat directly to global warming.
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- Even though three weeks of temperatures have still to
be registered, 2003 - already notable for Britain's hottest day on 10 August,
when the thermometer registered 38.5C (101.3F) at Faversham in Kent, is
on course to be the hottest year as a whole in Britain in nearly 350 years
of reliable records.
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- Data maintained by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of
the University of East Anglia in Norwich show that, unless we are hit by
a sustained freeze of Arctic proportions in the next three weeks, the current
12 months will prove the hottest in the whole of the Central England Temperature
Record, which goes back to 1659. The year's expected final average temperature
of 10.65C will beat the previous records of 1990 (10.63C) and 1999 (10.62C).
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- The Continent was even hotter, and the three months of
June, July and August were the warmest recorded in Western and Central
Europe by a considerable degree. Over a huge area of land from France to
northern Italy, the average temperature was above the norm by 3.78C - far
in excess of anything recorded before.
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- Professor Phil Jones, co-director of the CRU, said this
could not be accounted for by natural climate variability, and can be attributed
to global warming caused by human actions. It is unusual for a leading
scientist to make the link so directly. "The temperatures recorded
in Europe this year were out of all proportion to the previous record,"
he said.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=471145
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