'Global warming evidence is overwhelming'

London, (IANS) - Latest temperature readings from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean in a new climate change report from the Met Office in Britain and its US counterpart have provided the "greatest evidence we have ever had" that the world is warming.

Usually scientists rely on the temperature over land, taken from weather stations around the world for the last 150 years, to show global warming, reports the Telegraph. But climate change sceptics questioned this evidence, especially in the wake of recent scandals like "Climategate".

Now for the first time, the State of the Climate report, compiled by the Met Office and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has brought together all the different ways of measuring changes in the climate.

The 10 indicators of climate change include measurements of sea level rise taken from ships, the temperature of the upper atmosphere taken from weather balloons and field surveys of melting glaciers.

New technology has also made it possible to measure the temperature of the oceans, which absorb 90 percent of the world's heat.

The report shows "unequivocally that the world is warming and has been for more than three decades".

And despite the cold winter in Europe and north east America, this year is set to be the hottest on record.

Both the NOAA and Nasa have stated that the first six months of this year were the hottest on record, while the Met Office believes it is the second hottest start to the year after 1998.

Peter Stott, head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, said "variability" in different regions, such as the cold winter in Britain, does not mean the rest of the world is not warming.

And he said "greenhouse gases are the glaringly obvious explanation" for 0.56C (1F) warming over the last 50 years.

"Despite the fact people say global warming has stopped, the new data, added  onto existing data, gives us the  reatest evidence we have ever had," he said.

Referring to the sceptics' claim that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia showed scientists were willing to manipulate the land surface temperatures to show global warming, Stott said the sceptics can no longer question the land surface temperature as other records also show global warming.