The strongest tropical storms are becoming even stronger as the world's oceans warm, scientists have confirmed. Analysis of satellite data shows that in the last 25 years, strong cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons have become more frequent in most of the tropics.

Researchers confirm that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1300 years, and, if the climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous for at least 1700 years.

The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to Robert Watson, former Clinton science adviser and former chief scientist at the World Bank.

As greenhouse-gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued yesterday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

A US-British team of climate scientists has now found a surprisingly simple explanation for the puzzling drop in the rise of global temperatures between the 1940s and early 1970s -- a difference in the way British and US ships' crews measured the sea surface temperatures.

Scientists have warned that "reactive nitrogen" is accumulating on the planet which is linked with the greenhouse effect, smog, haze, acid rain, coastal "dead zones" and ozone depletion.

Global warming could bring the USA a dramatic increase in the frequency of weather conditions that feed severe thunderstorms and tornadoes by the end of the 21st century, says a study out Monday.

Some locations could see as much as a 100% increase in the number of days that favor severe thunderstorms, says the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. But, they add, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020.

Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global climate. If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive life styles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of prior human history. The eventual response to doubling preindustrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet.

The jet stream -- America's stormy weather maker -- is creeping northward and weakening, new research shows. That potentially means less rain in the already dry South and Southwest and more storms in the North.

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

China is losing a million acres a year to desertification. In Dunhuang, a former Silk Road oasis in the Gobi, the resulting water shortage has become critical.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, says a study. International scientists found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels increased levels of CO2 by 17%. The other 18% came from a decline in the natural ability of land and oceans to soak up CO2 from the atmosphere.

Human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapour in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades, climatologists have concluded. The rises in humidity could affect patterns of extreme storms, they warn.

A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures -- the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change -- is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said yesterday. The IPCC study added: The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realized and the world must learn to live with the effects.

The haze of pollution that blankets southern Asia is accelerating the loss of Himalayan glaciers, bequeathing an incalculable bill to China, India and other countries whose rivers flow from this source, scientists warned.

Global warming's effect on wind patterns and sea temperatures have nearly doubled the number of hurricanes a year in the Atlantic Ocean over the past century, says a new study by US scientists.

The level of 'dangerous interference' "is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades."

Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed. Emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at three times the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted.

It used to be that climate scientists worried about how to make the public care about changes that might not happen for a century. Today they have a bigger problem: some of the changes arent waiting around that long.

Climate change change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted. A surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity.

The world's richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas. But they are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world's most vulnerable regions -- most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

New calculations show that sensitivity of Earth's climate to changes in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has been consistent for the last 420 million years -- with each doubling of CO2 generating a temperature increase of 3* C.

The US Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. What has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another natural swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert.

Recent observations of downward solar radiation fluxes at Earth's surface have shown a recovery from the previous decline known as global "dimming", with the "brightening" beginning around 1990. The increasing amount of sunlight at the surface profoundly affects climate and may represent certain diminished counterbalances to greenhouse gas warming, thereby making the warming trend more evident during the past decade.

With its rising temperatures, spreading deserts, disappearing glaciers and invasion of non-native fish, Spain is fast becoming the poster-child for global warming impacts.

"A broad array of scientists, including authors of the report and independent experts, said the latest analysis was the most sobering view yet of a century in which thousands of years of relatively stable climate conditions will suddenly be replaced by a new normalcy of continual change." (The New York Times)

Stern Report indicates implications of different temperature rises in degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.

The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict.

A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain's leading climate experts has warned.

The IPCC's fourth assessment report, to be published in February,  reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms. But the panel has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.

The rise in humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide has accelerated sharply, according to a new analysis. The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year.

The rise in concentrations of the greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere has slowed down considerably in recent years, research suggests. Scientists say levels have been stable for about seven years following a steep rise during the last century.

Levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane are on the rise and could accelerate global warming, scientists said Thursday. Drought in recent years reduced methane emissions from natural sources and masked the impact of methane increases from human activities.

More than half of the world's major forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century. Extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will also become more common according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.

The chemicals that replaced CFCs are better for the ozone layer, but do little to help global warming. These chemicals, too, act as a reflective layer in the atmosphere that traps heat like a greenhouse.

Heat waves like those that have scorched Europe and the United States in recent weeks are becoming more frequent because of global warming, say scientists who have studied decades of weather records and computer models of past, present and future climate.

Most of the United States is getting wetter, thanks to global warming. Most of the continental United States is getting wetter while droughts are getting briefer and rarer, say scientists who have analyzed and modeled continental US stream flows and soil moisture data from 1925 to 2003.

Researchers worry that if they cannot recall the distant climatic past, the world may be condemned to repeat it. And repeating the warmth of the early Pliocene epoch of 3 million to 4 million years ago would be a shocker. With no more carbon dioxide warming the greenhouse than today, the globe was a good 3°C warmer, and sea level was a whopping 25 meters higher. But how could such a modest stock of greenhouse gas fuel such warming? Unfortunately, no one knows.

The world is likely to suffer a temperature rise of more than 3C, says the UK government's chief scientist.  That would cause drought and famine and threaten millions of lives, said Professor David King in a report based on computer predictions.

Air temperatures above the entire frozen continent of Antarctica have risen three times faster than the rest of the world during the past 30 years.

Scientists have recorded a significant rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pushing it to a new record level.  

CO2 levels now stand at 381 parts per million (ppm) - 100ppm above the pre-industrial average. Moreover 2005 saw one of the largest increases on record - a rise of 2.6ppm.

The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

Human activities are releasing greenhouse gases more than 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past, according to an expert on ancient climates.

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.

The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below "dangerous" levels.