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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1214-02.htm2006 Set to be 6th Warmest Worldwide: UK Report by Jeremy Lovell This year is set to be the sixth warmest worldwide since records began, stoked by global warming linked to human activities, the British Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia said on Thursday.
As England basks in unseasonably warm December weather two weeks before the end of the year, the Met Office said data from January to November made 2006 the warmest on record for central England.
"Worldwide, the provisional figures for 2006 using data from January to November, place the year as the sixth warmest year" since records began in the 1850s, the report said.
The previous warmest years were 1998 and 2005, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO was due to release its own 2006 figures later on Thursday.
"The top 10 warmest years have all occurred in the last 12 years," it said, adding that 2006 could have been warmer but for La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Pacific Ocean.
"The figures support recent research from David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma and Peter Stott at the Met Office which showed links between human behavior and the warming trend," said Met Office scientist David Parker.
Most scientists now agree that world average temperatures may rise by between two and six degrees Celsius this century due to emissions of so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
They say this would cause polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise, causing floods, famines and violent storms and putting millions of lives at risk.
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