NAIROBI, Kenya — No one is worrying about a predicted global warming trend these days in Alaska, where an unprecedented high pressure zone in January sent temperatures plummeting so low that they could not be recorded on thermometers.
But try telling that to ski resort operators in the Swiss Alps, who have had to shut down operations in the face of one of the warmest, driest winters on record, including a 68-day period without rain or snow--the longest dry spell in 125 years of record-keeping.
Winter likewise is little more than a memory in Scandinavia and Japan, both of which experienced the mildest January since they began keeping track of temperatures in the 1800s.
In Argentina, where it is summer, temperatures soared far above normal in January, accompanied by drought conditions reminiscent of last year's dust bowl in America's Midwest, while in tropical Maracaibo, Venezuela, temperatures dove from a normally steamy 104 to a cool 50--the lowest in a decade.
Steady Rain in Dry Season
And up and down the coast of East Africa, rain has been falling steadily through what is supposed to be the dry season, producing bumper crops in countries where a few years ago thousands of people died of starvation.
"The weather this year is extremely unusual, in ways that grip the imagination," said Peter Usher of the U.N. Environment Program. "It is almost a case of rather than look for someplace where the weather is unusual you look for someplace where it is normal."
Usher, the chief meteorologist at UNEP's world headquarters in Nairobi, is no alarmist. Cautious and conscientious, he is quick to point out that people have short memories when it comes to the weather, and everyone thinks he knows more than the weatherman.
Examples Cited
But, he conceded in a recent interview, "The weather conditions this year may be unique. I cannot recall a year in which more countries have experienced unusual weather at the same time and have recorded new absolutes (all-time highs and lows)."
Recent weather "anomalies" noted by Usher:
- The drought of 1988 in America's grain belt.
- Unseasonal rainfall in Africa after decades of drought.
- Extremely mild winter throughout Europe, breaking all-time records in Scandinavia and elsewhere.
- Major Caribbean storms last fall of unprecedented ferocity.
To those peculiarities, a check of United Press International bureaus around the world added:
