*Global Warming disasters will increase - UN meteorologists*

19 Mar 2007 18:21:12 GMT
Source: Reuters

MADRID, March 19 (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to bring more
tidal waves, floods and hurricanes, leading meteorologists said on Monday.

"What we know is that global warming is very likely to lead in the
future to more frequent tidal waves," the secretary general of the World
Meteorological Organisation (WMO) told a news conference ahead of a
meeting in Madrid on Monday.

"Heavy precipitation events are very likely to become more frequent ...
and it's likely that hurricanes and cyclones will become more intense,"
Michel Jarraud said.

He was speaking at the start of a four day conference of the WMO, a
United Nations specialised agency for weather, climate and water.

The WMO's President Alexander Bedritsky said flooding in mid and higher
latitudes in Western Europe had already become more common.

In Russia the number of damaging weather incidents logged in a year now
averages more than one a day, said Bedritsky, who is also head of the
Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental
Monitoring, Roshydromet.

"There's a constant increase of around 6 percent a year," he said.

A draft survey by top U.N. climate scientists is due for release in
Brussels on April 6. It says climate change, widely blamed on the
burning of fossil fuels, is already underway with impacts ranging from
melting glaciers to earlier than normal plant growth in spring.

Meteorologists must increasingly consider climate change projections in
their forecasting, former WMO president John Zillman told the Madrid
conference, which is due to publish the conclusions of its four day
meeting on Thursday.