Environment Counts | The Global Climate 2001-2010 :
The World Meteorological Organization has released its decennial report on the global climate. Subtitled a decade of extremes the report analyses global and regional temperatures
and precipitation, as well as extreme events.
The report states the decade was the warmest for both hemispheres and for both land and ocean surface temperatures. This was accompanied by a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, and accelerating loss of net mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and from the world’s glaciers.
As a result of the widespread melting and the thermal expansion of sea water, global mean sea levels rose about 3 millimetres (mm) per year, about double the observed 20th century trend of 1.6 mm per year. Global sea level averaged over the decade was about 20 cm higher than that of 1880.
