Extra-strength weather

*Numerous long-term changes in the climate have been observed, including extreme weather such as droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.

* Trends towards more powerful storms and hotter, longer dry periods have been observed and are assessed in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. Warmer temperatures mean greater evaporation, and a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture -- hence there is more water aloft that can fall as precipitation. Similarly, dry regions are apt to lose still more moisture if the weather is hotter; this exacerbates droughts and desertification.

* The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas. Significantly increased precipitation has been observed in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia. There is also observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970.

*Drying has also been observed over large regions, i.e. the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia.

* In Africa's large catchment basins of Niger, Lake Chad, and Senegal, total available water has decreased by 40 to 60 per cent, and desertification has been worsened by lower average annual rainfall, runoff, and soil moisture, especially in southern, northern, and western Africa.

* The Rhine floods of 1996 and 1997, the Chinese floods of 1998, the East European floods of 1998 and 2002, the Mozambique and European floods of 2000, and the monsoon-based flooding of 2004 in Bangladesh (which left 60 per cent of the country under water), are examples of more powerful storms.

The decline of winter

* Average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global rate in the past 100 years. Temperatures at the top of the permafrost layer have generally increased since the 1980s by up to 3°C. In the Russian Arctic, buildings are collapsing because permafrost under their foundations has melted.

* Snow cover has declined by some 10 per cent in the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere since the late 1960s. Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined in both hemispheres and widespread decreases in glaciers and ice caps have contributed to sea level rise. New data evaluated by the IPCC shows that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise from 1993 to 2003. The average global sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year between 1961 and 2003, but between 1993 and 2003 it rose by 3.1 mm per year.   

Shifts in the natural world

* Scientists have observed climate-induced changes in at least 420 physical processes and biological species or communities.

* In the Alps, some plant species have been migrating upward by one to four meters per decade, and some plants previously found only on mountaintops have disappeared.

* In Europe, mating and egg-laying of some bird species has occurred earlier in the season -- in the United Kingdom, for example, egg-laying by 20 of 65 species, including long-distance migrants, advanced by an average of eight days between 1971 and 1995.

* Across Europe, the growing season in controlled, mixed-species gardens lengthened by 10.8 days from 1959 to 1993. Butterflies, dragnonflies, moths, beetles, and other insects are now living at higher latitudes and altitudes, where previously it was too cold to survive.