Last year tied with 2015 as the fifth-warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, NASA said. That was despite the presence of the La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which generally lowers global temperatures slightly.

The world’s average global temperature is now 1.1 C to 1.2 C higher than in pre-industrial times.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday it had ranked 2022 as the sixth warmest since 1880. European Union scientists this week said 2022 was the fifth warmest year in their records.

Climate assessments produce slightly different rankings depending on the data sources used and the way records account for minor data alterations over time, for example, a weather station being moved to a new location.

NASA said temperatures were increasing by more than 0.2 C per decade, putting the world on track to blow past the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5 C to avoid its most devastating consequences.

“At the rate that we’re going, it’s not going to take more than two decades to get us to that. And the only way that we’re not going to do that is if we stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Schmidt said he expected 2023 to be slightly warmer than 2022, due to a weaker La Nina cooling phenomenon.

“The global mean temperature will be even higher in 10 years from now,” said ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne, adding that unless countries stopped burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels temperatures would continue to climb.

Weather extremes

The changing climate fuelled weather extremes across the planet in 2022. Europe suffered its hottest summer on record, while in Pakistan floods killed 1,700 people and wrecked infrastructure, drought ravaged crops in Uganda and wildfires ripped through Mediterranean countries.

Despite most of the world’s major emitters pledging to eventually slash their net emissions to zero, global CO2 emissions continue to rise.

Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere last year reached levels not experienced on earth for three million years, Schmidt said.

At this year’s COP28 climate conference, countries will formally assess their progress towards the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C goal — and the far faster emissions cuts needed to meet it.

COP28 host the United Arab Emirates on Thursday appointed the head of its state-owned oil company as president of the conference, sparking concerns among campaigners and scientists about the fossil fuel industry’s influence in the talks.

— Kate Abnett is Reuters’ European climate and energy correspondent in Brussels.

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The arguments are in two basic camps.

The “Global Warmers” have mathematical models that claim to predict that we are soon over the cliff and all doomed. The solution is to quickly kill coal and petroleum and we will all be saved.

The “Deniers” believe that the climate may be changing, but forces of nature are in charge and mankind has little to do with it.

To deny that climate is changing is to deny that we live on planet Earth. The planet we share is about 1.4 billion years old and climate has gone through many dramatic changes in that time. In more “recent” times of about one million years we have seen glaciers come and go several times from almost all of the area we farm in Western Canada and as far south as northeast Kansas.

Weather and climate

One thing that all camps agree on is that weather is the day-to-day, month-to-month and year-to year conditions that we experience. Climate is the 30-year average. Therefore, if we are talking about climate change, we must trace how the 30-year average is changing.

Climate data for Swift Current, Sask.

As a scientist, it is data that carries the day, not opinion. For the past decade I have been attempting to assemble historic records long enough to allow temperature to be studied as climate, not weather. Accessible data from Environment Canada is very limited.

Thanks to a long line of dedicated scientists at the Swift Current Agricultural Research Station we now have a complete monthly record of temperature and precipitation from 1886 to present. The first scientists must have assembled existing information because the Swift Current Experimental Farm begin in 1920. The data from 1886 on is accessible on the current Environment Canada website.

The three groups of graphs below show how the climate has changed. The 1915 data is the average of data from 1886 to 1915. The 2018 data is the average of 1989 to 2018 inclusive. The Y axis has a 5 C temperature range for all months except January which required 6 C. That allows easy visual comparison of the temperature range of different months.

Readers can study annual average temperature and temperatures for individual months and draw your own conclusions. Here are some observations I have made:

1. Winter months: The range of 30-year average temperature is large for January, February and March. Those months show warming from 1915 to 1940, cooling from 1940-1980 and warming of several degrees from about 1980 to 2000. The latest episode of warming ended about the turn of the century. There is some indication of cooling in recent 30-year records but the time is too short to be sure.

The big range in January to March will drive the annual average as most other months have a much lower range of temperature.

2. April, May, June and August: In April, May, June and August, 30-year averages are little different now than they were in 1915.

3. July: July is actually cooling.

4. September: September has a sharp warming period near the end of the record. (see at bottom)

5. October, November and December: October, November and December show no clear long-term trend. December was warmer in 1886 to 1915 than the most recent 30 year average.

With this data and a few observations, I leave my readers to draw their own conclusions about what this all mean in terms of our ability to grow crops in a time of Climate Change.

Bad news and good news

Whenever I share this data with Climate Crisis folks they dismiss it as only one record and say it should be based on the whole Earth. But no one will say what thermometers they average to come up with the global temperature.

The bad news is that our current Environment Canada records make it very difficult to do similar analysis for many other sites.

The good news is I have recently learned how to access the huge U.S. long-term weather records to prepare graphs to compare with the Swift Current data.

Fargo, North Dakota, also has data back to 1886. The parallels between the Swift Current and Fargo data are remarkable. We have data for Dodge City, Kansas, right back to the days of Wyatt Earp (1875). Readers long enough in the tooth will remember the Wyatt Earp black-and-white TV programs of the 1960s-70s. Young folk can Google Wyatt Earp, Dodge City to get the story.

In coming issues, I’ll report on many other sites in the Great Plains of the U.S.

The post Les Henry: Weather, climate and actual data appeared first on Grainews.

I must admit anytime I see something related to carbon credits on an ag conference agenda immediately my head goes to that old fairy tale about the Emperor’s New Clothes — a lot of excitement over something that’s not really there.

In all fairness, there may be something real happening. It’s me. I just need to talk to a few farmers involved in the programs who can tell me they direct seeded all their crops, or they put annual cropland back into pasture and at the end of the year they received a $2,000 cheque (or whatever) for their carbon sequestration efforts. It will be my mission in 2019 to find these folks.

The reason I get confused — I was at a national forage conference in November with three very knowledgeable people on the agenda all talking about carbon credit programs and largely what I heard, in a fog of acronyms and carbon jargon, is that they attended many meetings with a lot of other knowledgeable people to talk about protocols and policy and procedure at a bureaucratic level. What I didn’t hear were any specific practices I as a farmer or rancher, at home, on the land, need to apply so I can earn carbon credits for my good efforts and put a few extra dollars in my pocket.

I have been listening to people talk about carbon credit programs for farmers for 10 or 15 years but it sounds like meetings are still on going to hammer out protocols and policies. Some provinces have some sort of programs working, others don’t.

Apparently Alberta has been a leader in the carbon credits business. And while I get the impression there was a fairly reasonable carbon offset program developed in 2007, subsequent governments finally smartened up and decided it was too simple, and further regulations were needed to make it more complicated.

The last I read those changes had a discouraging effect among producers — more paper work, more record keeping — to the point where some were predicting the “entire no-till offset program may soon be scrapped.” Part of the problem was that too many farmers have been practicing no-till farming for too long, so now the government was only interested in paying for “innovative” carbon sequestration methods. What comes to mind: “here is something that was working, so let’s break it.”

At the national and international level my confusion only deepens. The problem? There always seems to be another global summit dealing with climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Targets are sets and almost immediately no one is meeting their targets, or in the case of the United States, they just pull out of the whole initiative completely.

I was recently reading where through the United Nations hundreds of world leaders and other climate change experts have been meeting annually for 25 years to discuss the need and urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the last scientific report showed that global greenhouse gas emissions actually went up 1.4 per cent to hit a record high of 32.5 billion tonnes in 2017 and another record-breaking figure was expected for 2018. So much for reduction.

If that is correct, 25 years of discussion appear to have failed in changing the direction of this ocean liner. I suppose it is reasonably good for the hundreds of world leaders and climate change experts who get to gather at some of the nicest world locations and feel good about discussing a “very serious problem,” but it doesn’t appear those meetings are resulting in any progress. On the surface the meetings may be making it worse.

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The congressionally mandated report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, outlined the projected impact of global warming on every corner of U.S. society in a dire warning that is at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil-fuels agenda.

“With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century — more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states,” the report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II, said.

Global warming would disproportionately hurt the poor, broadly undermine human health, damage infrastructure, limit the availability of water, alter coastlines, and boost costs in industries from farming, to fisheries and energy production, the report said.

But it added that projections of further damage could change if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply curbed, even though many of the impacts of climate change — including more frequent and more powerful storms, droughts and flooding — are already under way. “Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today,” it said.

The report supplements a study issued last year that concluded humans are the main driver of global warming and warned of catastrophic effects to the planet.

The studies clash with policy under President Donald Trump, who has been rolling back Obama-era environmental and climate protections to maximize production of domestic fossil fuels, including crude oil, already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the new report was “largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that… there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population.”

The government’s next update of the National Climate Assessment, she said, “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Trump last year announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Deal agreed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change, arguing the accord would hurt the U.S. economy and provide little tangible environmental benefit. Trump and several members of his cabinet have also repeatedly cast doubt on the science of climate change, arguing that the causes and impacts are not yet settled.

Environmental groups said the report reinforced their calls for the United States to take action on climate change.

“While President Trump continues to ignore the threat of climate change, his own administration is sounding the alarm,” said Abigail Dillen, president of environmental group Earthjustice.

“This report underscores what we are already seeing firsthand: climate change is real, it’s happening here, and it’s happening now.”

Previous research, including from U.S. government scientists, has also concluded that climate change could have severe economic consequences, including damage to infrastructure, water supplies and agriculture.

Severe weather and other impacts also increase the risk of disease transmission, decrease air quality, and can increase mental health problems, among other effects.

Thirteen government departments and agencies, from USDA to NASA, were part of the committee that compiled the new report.

The entire report can be viewed online.

— Writing for Reuters by Richard Valdmanis.

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Prairie farmers must become “climate smart” to gradually adapt and adjust how they farm to continue to be successful.

What is changing?

Crop production has and will continue to be affected as the climate continues to change. The magnitude of climate impact on crop types that can be grown and crop yields will vary depending on your local climatic differences. Climate change will influence many factors that affect crop growth and yield.

• More with Ross: Getting the most from your soil test reports

Typically, Prairie farmers can expect longer growing seasons and milder and shorter winters. Southern and central Prairies will likely see more warming than other regions. Most regions will have longer frost-free growing seasons, but will also have increased evapotranspiration (crop water use requirement + evaporation). Expected higher temperatures may either enhance or negatively affect crop yield.

The greatest unknown is precipitation. If climate change results in increased growing season precipitation, higher crop yields can be expected. But, if growing season precipitation is lower, crop yields will be negatively affected.

Overall, warmer spring-summer air temperatures and longer growing season conditions will likely benefit crop production across the Prairies. Farmers can adjust by growing crops that require a longer growing season and/or require more crop heat units. This could be very beneficial for irrigation farmers and dryland farmers that continue to have adequate growing season precipitation. But, the combination of higher summer temperatures and longer growing season will negatively affect dryland farmers in drier years — particularly in drought years.

Warmer temperatures can mean increased crop water demands and if growing season precipitation declines, this will cause lower crop yields. This will be a greater concern where water stress is already a problem in the brown and dark brown soil zones of the southern Prairies. Hotter weather at flowering can cause negative effects with crops such as pea or canola, reducing yield potential.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased from 300 ppm (parts per million) in 1960 to over 400 ppm now. Increased CO2 is expected to increase crop growth but this may not translate into higher crop yields. Warmer temperatures and increased crop water demands may counteract CO2 benefits to depress crop yields.

Adequately fertilized crops are expected to respond more positively to higher CO2 in the atmosphere, than crops with reduced fertilize inputs. Increased CO2 is expected to positively affect C3 crops (e.g. wheat, barley, canola, soybean). But, contrary to popular belief, C4 crops (e.g. corn and sorghum) are expected to be less responsive to increased CO2 to levels in the atmosphere.

Changing climate will impact crop disease and insect pressure. Wetter conditions will likely increase disease pressure, but drier conditions may reduce disease pressure. Milder winter conditions will likely increase populations of some insects such as the cabbage seed pod weevil that affect canola and pea leaf weevil that affects peas and fababean. Drier spring and summer conditions could increase problems with grasshoppers and the wheat stem sawfly. Shifting concerns with diseases and insects will mean farmers must be even more vigilant in scouting for problem insects and diseases and using control when necessary. The pressure will be on our plant breeders to develop more tolerant and competitive crop varieties. Pesticide companies will need to continue to develop new products to control insects and diseases.

Farmers must become “climate smart” about adapting their cropping programs. Agronomy research will be needed as climatic conditions gradually change. Adaptation research must be undertaken to better understand climate change impacts on each crop type grown in each major agro-ecological area of the Prairies.

Researchers, agronomists and farmers will need to understand climate change implications on crop production over the short term and the long term. Each year, short-term adaptation by farmers must consider the local climate trends and look at weather forecasts ranging from daily to the full growing season.

For most farmers, long-term climate projections are still highly uncertain and difficult to plan for. The likelihood of further changes occurring, and the increasing scale of potential climate impacts, means Prairie farmers will need to be proactive, closely watch research results and be prepared to gradually adapt agronomic practices.

Here are a couple of questions to consider: What adaptation options should be considered for moderate climate change for your farm cropping system? What are some of the crops and agronomy planning you can consider in the near future?

Crop planning for climate change

Consider increasing the diversification of crops you grow.

Over the past 40 years, Prairie farms have become more specialized. Making your farm more diverse to perhaps include cattle and grow grass for hay and pasture on a part of your farm might be a consideration. Putting your poorer land back into grass for hay and grazing could result in improving soil quality and increase the diversity of your farming operation.

Consider growing additional crops to account for a more variable climate. Consider growing several cereal crops and pulse crops in your rotation with canola. More diverse crops will help to disrupt insect and disease cycles. Including pulse crops can help to improve soil quality and reduce nitrogen requirements. Consider growing longer-season crops such as corn or soybeans, if your growing season length, amount of crop heat units and growing season precipitation are suitable for these crops. If you’re concerned about drier conditions, consider growing one or more crops that tolerate moisture stress, such as mustard, or grow crops with a lower water use requirement such as pea.

Using soil moisture conservation practices will become increasingly important in the drier regions of the Prairies. No-till, direct seeding and seeding earlier to conserve soil moisture will be essential management practices. Ultimately, farmers will need to produce more food with less water!

Water conservation will become just as important for irrigation farmers. Reduced snow pack is expected in the Rocky Mountains, which will reduce water available for irrigation. It is expected that within the next 30 years most glaciers in the mountains will disappear, reducing water flow in the Bow and South Saskatchewan Rivers. As the urban population on the Prairies continues to grow, there will be increased water demand and conflict, which could further reduce water available for irrigation.

Short-term crop planning

There are several agronomic practices you could use to adapt to our changing climate.

1. Soil moisture conservation. In regions where moisture is limiting, be sure to use no-till, direct seeding to conserve as much moisture as possible for crop growth, to offset warmer, drier conditions.

2. Earlier seeding. With milder winters and slightly longer growing seasons, seeding a bit earlier is an easy adjustment that does not increase your costs. Earlier seeded crops often have a yield advantage over later seeded crops. But, when seeding earlier, plant crops like wheat, barley or peas first than can withstand late spring frosts.

3. Add a winter cereal to your rotation. Milder winters make winter cereal production more viable. When winter wheat is seeded at the optimum time in early fall, it will often out-yield spring wheat by up to 20 per cent or more. This will increase diversity of your crop rotation and will take advantage of early spring moisture.

4. Add a pulse crop to your rotation. Adding a pulse crop will help to improve soil quality, reduce nitrogen fertilizer requirements and add nitrogen to the soil for the next crop. A crop like pea has a lower water use requirement, is shallower rooted and will leave more subsoil moisture for a subsequent crop. Look at all the pulse crops to see which ones would be a good fit for your farm.

For me, the science on climate change is absolutely clear — our climate is changing. “Climate smart” farming is becoming increasing important for Prairie farmers. Adapting our cropping practices with our changing climate is essential to ensure our Prairie agriculture remains economically and environmentally sustainable.

The post Get your farm ready for global warming appeared first on Grainews.

As I pointed out to my inner circle in an earlier Facebook post, January 2017 is already much colder than it was in late December 2016, so just having the Alberta fuel tax in place for three weeks already appears to have nipped global warming in the bud. So what’s all the fuss about? The tax is working!

I don’t think there are too many of us, during our most lucid moments, who don’t believe that looking after the environment is important. My thought on climate change is how will we ever know if any penny we pay in a fuel tax, each margarine container that gets recycled, or adding Beano to the ration of every feeder animal will make a difference?

• More with Lee Hart: The pros and cons of a head transplant

It is such a huge, complex issue that is completely muddled by science, money and politics.

I believe the climate is changing. David Philips, the senior climatologist with Environment Canada told me directly not long ago the Canadian climate has warmed up:

“Over the past 70 years Canadian temperatures have warmed 1.5 C to 1.7 C. And over the next 50 years it could warm by 2.5 C to 3 C. The warming trend could put Western Canada on par with the current climate (growing conditions) of Nebraska and Iowa. Ontario and other parts of Eastern Canada could see growing conditions similar to Kentucky. Overall, on the plus side, the models show the warming trend will result in longer growing seasons. While warmer is generally good, on the downside it is also expected to be dryer.”

He seems like a bright, trustworthy guy. I believe him. But did me running my truck up and down Highway 2 in Alberta, or all those burping steers at Border Line Feeders in southern Saskatchewan, or all the farmers doing recreational tillage in Manitoba cause that?

Good, ol’ Dr. Tim Ball, retired, University of Manitoba (and he’s still out there on the speaker circuit), but he’s looked long and hard at climate and makes the point, the climate is always changing — always has and always will.

Good, ol’ former Country Guide columnist Dr. Tim Ball, retired, University of Manitoba, (not sure if he is still on the speaker circuit or not), but he’s looked long and hard at climate and makes the point, the climate is always changing — always has and always will.

I watch science specials on Nova and their scientists look at the four billion year history of the earth, and world climate has repeatedly swung (over a few million years at a time) from hot to cold. On the day of this writing, I could drive up to Carrot River, Sask. near Prince Albert and supposedly it is a high of -20 C with a windchill of -25 C, which isn’t very topical. Yet if I had made the trip there 92 million years ago I would have found crocodiles on the edge of a great inland sea. Something changed, and I don’t think it had anything to do with me and my Dodge truck.

And then you throw politics into the discussion and good luck. If you are a politician who hasn’t been on the climate change bandwagon in the past 10 to 15 years, you might as well forget it. Again, I agree it is important to look after the environment, promote and even insist on good environmental stewardship and reduce pollution but unless everyone is serious about it, does anything really change?

Some of the world leaders can sit down, and feel good about themselves because they hammer out a climate change accord, and are “really making a difference.” But I bet if I called a household in China today, they would have a hard time finding the phone because the smog created by their industrial complex is so thick they can’t see their hand in front of their face. So whether I drive or walk over to Walmart today will that change anything in China? Alberta set a carbon emission cap for the oilsands, but it actually allows for an increase in emissions over the next 25 years. How does that work?

Nationally, Prime Minister Trudeau is intent on having a national carbon tax to help reduce carbon emissions and further fund environmental improvement programs. One Saskatchewan rancher was telling me the other day if this progressively increasing carbon tax comes into effect it will potentially cost him “tens of thousands of dollars per year” in increased taxes on his ranch.

I’m not sure what these grain farmers and ranchers are complaining about. If the cost of production goes up (including higher taxes) why don’t they just charge more for their products? Seems simple enough to me. Oh, wait, come to think of it, agriculture doesn’t work that way. Walmart, Superstore, Safeway/Sobeys they can pass on increased costs to consumers, but not primary producers.

Alberta Premier Notley and her ministers (and many others) often talk about the affect of increased costs, and say businesses, including farmers and ranchers, just need to become more efficient. Why farmers didn’t think of that…

I am not exactly sure what becoming more efficient looks like on a farm or ranch today. I was listening to a radio talk show recently discussing the new Alberta carbon tax, and one farmer called in and he was absolutely livid. His basic message was “you work, and work and work, cope with the weather and volatile markets, tighten everything up as much as possible to be as efficient as possible, and maybe just maybe you break even or see a little profit then along comes another tax that sets everything back to zero or minus”… (if you screamed that you would get some sense of how frustrated he was.)

These ideas, concepts and philosophies are good, noble, worthwhile. But how do you know if it makes any difference? Does it just look good politically? I can do the best, squeaky clean job on my side of the street, but if the guy (or whole neighbourhood) across the road still has an uncontrolled mess, does anything really change?

Maybe the upset over the carbon tax will force a government change. And then I can watch the new prime minister, Canadian billionaire Kevin O’Leary, and U.S. president, billionaire Donald Trump run my world. I will consider what ever fees I pay in carbon tax, as my low, low, low price of admission for that show.

The post The federal carbon tax is already working! appeared first on Grainews.

Some freak weather events would have happened naturally but the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said greenhouse gas emissions had raised the risks of extreme events, sometimes by a factor of 10 or more.

“We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Among the worst extremes, a 2011-12 drought and famine in the Horn of Africa killed more than 250,000 people and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines killed 7,800 in 2013, the WMO said.

Superstorm Sandy caused $67 billion of damage in 2012, mostly in the United States, it said in a report issued to a meeting of almost 200 nations in Morocco tasked with implementing a 2015 global agreement to combat climate change.

The last five-year period beat 2006-10 as the warmest such period since records began in the 19th century.

The heat was accompanied by a gradual rise in sea levels spurred by melting glaciers and ice sheets. The changes “confirmed the long-term warming trend caused by greenhouse gases,” the WMO said of the report.

And the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, reached 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for the first time in records in 2015, it said.

Last year was the first in which temperatures were one degrees Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, partly because of an El Nino weather event that warmed the Pacific.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set an overriding target of limiting warming to “well below” 2 degrees C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times, ideally just 1.5 (2.7F).

But pledges so far to curb greenhouse gas emissions are too weak and put the globe on target for about 3C (5.4F), U.N. data show. The Marrakesh meeting is trying to work out ways to step up actions and write rules for the Paris Agreement.

Getting on track “means a global transformation” of the world economy to cleaner energies in sectors from energy to transport, Moroccan Environment Minister Hakima El Haite told Reuters.

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Examining long-term trends for ice floating on the ocean since the 1950s, scientists in Germany and the United States projected the ocean around the North Pole would be ice-free in summers by the mid-2040s at current levels of emissions.

In the historical records, they found that every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere meant on average the loss of three square metres of ice in September, when the ice reaches a minimum extent before expanding in winter.

That made it possible to “grasp the contribution of personal carbon dioxide emissions to the loss of Arctic sea ice,” scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center wrote in the journal Science.

Each passenger taking a return flight from New York to Europe, or driving a gasoline car 4,000 kms, would emit about a tonne of carbon dioxide, they estimated.

A long-term retreat of Arctic sea ice is already causing profound changes, disrupting the lives of indigenous peoples while opening the region to more oil and gas exploration and shipping.

Scientists usually deal in more abstract terms such as billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. “Here it’s more personal,” lead author Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute told Reuters.

Some other scientists said the study was simplistic.

“This sounds like a rather crude equation,” Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, told Reuters.

He said ice could disappear from the Arctic Ocean as early as 2017 or 2018 because of other factors triggered by man-made climate change, such as shifts in winds and rising sea temperatures.

In September 2016, sea ice shrank to an annual minimum extent of 4.14 million square kilometres (1.60 million square miles), matching 2007 as the second smallest in the satellite record behind 2012.

The study said goals set under the 2015 Paris Agreement for curbing emissions were insufficient to avert the loss of ice.

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Greenhouse gas emissions from industry left their first traces in the temperatures of tropical oceans and the Arctic around 1830, researchers wrote in a recent journal article, challenging widespread views that man-made climate change began only in the 20th century.

The Industrial Revolution began around 1750 in Britain, with a surge in the use of coal to power factories, ships and railways, and gradually spread around the world.

Greenhouse gases at the time were only a fraction of those now blamed for trapping excessive levels of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, stoking more droughts, floods, heat waves and rising sea levels.

“Our findings show that the climate can respond very quickly to changes in greenhouse gases,” lead author Nerilie Abram, of the Australian National University, told Reuters of the findings published in the journal Nature.

The scientists detected a rise in temperatures in the 19th century by studying the growth of old trees, corals, the makeup of lake sediments and air trapped in ice cores in Antarctica.

Their computer models showed that natural factors — such as changes in the sun’s energy output or the Earth’s orbit — could not fully explain the warming trend.

The rising heat only made sense when factoring in an early dose of man-made greenhouse gases, they wrote.

Previously, many scientists have reckoned a small rise in 19th century temperatures was a rebound after a sun-dimming volcanic eruption of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815.

“This is further evidence that the climate has already changed significantly since the pre-industrial period,” said Ed Hawkins, a climate scientists at Reading University who was not involved in the study.

Last year, almost 200 nations agreed at a Paris summit to shift from fossil fuels and set a goal of limiting rises in average surface temperatures to “well below” 2 C above pre-industrial times, ideally below 1.5 C.

The Paris deal does not define pre-industrial. Temperatures this year, likely to set new records, are just over 1 C above levels in the 1880s, a widely used baseline in climate science.

Abram said using a baseline of 1800 would make the Paris Agreement harder to achieve by adding perhaps 0.2 C.

“We are frighteningly close already to 1.5,” she said.

— Alister Doyle is a Reuters correspondent covering environmental and climate change-related issues from Oslo.

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July was the hottest single month since records began in the 19th century, driven by greenhouse gases and an El Nino event warming the Pacific. And NASA this week cited a 99 per cent chance that 2016 will be the warmest year, ahead of 2015 and 2014.

In a welcome break, a new annual record is unlikely in 2017 since the effect of El Nino — a phenomenon that warms the eastern Pacific and can disrupt weather patterns worldwide every two to seven years — is fading.

“Next year is probably going to be cooler than 2016,” said Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia. He added there was no sign of a strong La Nina, El Nino’s opposite that can cool the planet.

In 1998, a powerful El Nino led to a record year of heat and it took until 2005 to surpass the warmth. That hiatus led some people who doubt mainstream findings that climate change has a human cause to conclude that global warming had stopped.

“If 2017 is cooler, there will probably be some climate skeptics surfing on this information,” said Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

“The long-term trend is towards warming but there is natural variability so there are ups and downs. The scientific community will have again to explain what is happening,” he told Reuters.

The spike in temperatures in 1998 may also have contributed for several years to reduced government attention to climate change, which has been linked to more heat waves, floods, downpours and rising sea levels.

“One thing that the scientific community needs to be careful about is that they are not gearing up for a new ‘hiatus’ event,” said Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Energy Research in Oslo.

At a Paris summit last December, governments agreed the most comprehensive plan yet to shift away from fossil fuels, setting a goal of limiting the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 C above pre-industrial times, ideally 1.5 C.

Scientists are meeting in Geneva this week to sketch out themes for a report about the 1.5 C goal that was requested by world leaders at the summit for delivery in 2018.

— Alister Doyle is a Reuters correspondent covering environmental and climate change-related issues from Oslo.

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