UN: 2010 may be one of hottest years on record

CANCUN, Mexico - A scorching summer that killed thousands in Russia and exceptionally mild winters in the Arctic were among extreme weather events that have put 2010 on track to be one of the three hottest years on record, United Nations experts said yesterday.

The data from the World Meteorological Organization show that the past decade was the warmest ever, part of a trend that scientists attribute to man-made pollution trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Europeans and some Americans might think it was chilly this year, but their unusually cold winters were more than balanced by searing temperatures from Canada to Africa and the Indian subcontinent, said Michel Jarraud, WMO's secretary-general.

Parts of Greenland, where glaciers are threatened with summer melt, had an annual average temperature of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, said the WMO's report, released on the sidelines of a 193-nation UN conference on climate change.

Moscow had 33 straight days when the thermometer topped 86 degrees Fahrenheit and one day when it cracked 100, a record. Russian officials ascribed 11,000 excess deaths to the heat wave.

The WMO said the same extreme weather event that suffocated Russia also caused the floods that submerged a fifth of Pakistan, killing 1,700 people and displacing 20 million. The year also witnessed heavy rains that lashed Australia and Indonesia, flooding in Thailand and Vietnam, and drought in the Amazon basin and southwest China.

"The year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top three warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850," the WMO said.