Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 08/01/2013
Event: "The Met Office has revised downwards its projection for climate change through to 2017"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
Also see: Jan 11, 2013: BBC Radio 4: Julia Slingo: Met Office forecasts show that "the Earth will continue to be at record warm levels"
People:
Chris Aldridge: The Met Office has revised its forecast of the likely impact of global warming. It doesn't now expect temperatures in Britain to change substantially until at least 2017. Its experts think the slowdown in warming may be a result of changes in ocean currents and the activity of the sun.
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John Humphrys: It's 8 o'clock on Tuesday 8th January. The news headlines this morning: a British soldier in Afghanistan has been shot dead by a man thought to be from the Afghan army at a base about to be handed over to local security forces. MPs are voting today on government plans to limit the increase in most benefits to 1%. Bush fires are raging across Australia's most populous state in conditions the authorities have described as "catastrophic". And the Met Office says it does not believe global warming will be as severe as it had previously predicted. Today's newsreader is Chris Aldridge.
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Chris Aldridge: The Met Office has revised downwards its projection for climate change through to 2017. The new figure suggests that although global temperatures will be forced above their long-term average because of greenhouse gases, the recent slowdown in warming will continue. More details from our environment analyst Roger Harrabin.
Roger Harrabin: Last year the Met Office projected that as greenhouse gases increase, the world's temperature would be 0.54 degrees warmer than the long-term average by 2016. The new experimental Met Office computer model, looking a year further ahead, projects that the Earth will continue to warm, but the increase will be about 20% less than the previous calculation. If the new number proves accurate, there will have been little additional warming for two decades. The Met Office says natural cycles have caused the recent slowdown in warming, including maybe changes in the sun and ocean currents. Mainstream climate scientists say that when the natural cooling factors change again, temperatures will be driven up further by greenhouse gases.