By ARTHUR MAX
Associated Press
CANCUN, Mexico – The brutal heat waves that killed thousands of Europeans in 2003 and that choked Russia earlier this year will seem like average summers in the future as the Earth continues to warm, the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday.
The last decade confirmed scientific predictions of 20 years ago that temperatures will rise and storms will become more fierce – and those trends are likely to continue, said Ghassam Asrar, who heads the climate research center at the World Meteorological Organization.
The WMO was due to release details on the last decade’s global temperatures later this week at the U.N. climate conference in this Caribbean resort city, but Asrar said it was the warmest on record.