Here comes the sun: 2010 expected to be hottest year yet

According to scientific predictions made by the Met Office, 2010 will be the world’s warmest year on record with man-made climate change a huge factor.

Natural weather patterns will play less of a role than they did in 1998, the current warmest year, as El Niño, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, will be far weaker than it was 12 years ago.

The Met Office predicts that the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions will more than make up for El Niño’s shortcomings – while cautioning that a record year in 2010 will depend upon whether or not the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.

Numbers rising

At the COP15 summit, the Met Office announced that it expected the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average. It also forecasts an annual average of 14.58C compared with 14.52C in 1998.

If correct, the predicted temperature increase will be a huge blow to climate change skeptics, many of whom, armed with the still-argued “Climategate” emails, base their arguments on the fact that the temperature has not returned to the 1998 peak.

The Met Office also predicts that half the years between 2010 and 2019 will also be warmer than 1998.

“If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists, that we’re experiencing global cooling,” said Ben Stewart, of Greenpeace.“In reality the world is getting hotter, possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it.”

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which claims man-made climate change has been exaggerated, accused the Met Office of making a “political intervention” in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen. It said: “Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognized difficulties in making such confident predictions.”