Global warming in England not down to natural causes

The BBC and other sources are carrying a report that central England temperatures are about 1C higher than in the 1950s, According to Meteorological (Met) Office the average temperature in Central England was 9.4C; it is now 10.4C and the reason for the increase cannot be attributed only to natural climate change.

Computer models used by David Karoly (of the University of Oklahoma) and Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre indicate that that the warming observed over the past 50 years is extremely unlikely to be part of a natural cycle:. the calculated probability that the rise was part of a natural cycle was less than 5%. However when they introduced the factor of "anthropogenic forcing" (greenhouse gases produced by industry, transport and other human activities) the model reproduced the observed temperatures. They conclude that "..the observed annual mean warming trend over the last 50 years is very unlikely to be due to natural internal climate variability alone."

Their findings are set out in Anthropogenic warming of central England temperatures, which was published yesterday by the journal Atmospheric Science Letters, a publication by the Royal Meteorological Society.

Central England temperatures have been recorded since 1659 and the record is longest continuous series of temperature measurements made by instruments anywhere in the world.

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