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National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC April 15, 1998
This El Niño is consistent with a worldwide trend over the last 40 years toward a warmer and wetter world. This is just the sort of world projected under global climate change. In a sense, the El Niño may be providing us a window on the future. While we can't draw a causal link between El Niño and global warming, climate models do tell us that global warming will likely first manifest itself in changes in weather patterns similar to El Niño.
There is broad scientific consensus that climatic data and computer models reveal a discernible human influence on global climate. A warming of the Earth is likely occurring, and our best scientific evidence tells us that human activity is contributing to it. The average global surface temperature rose about a degree F over the past century and is projected to rise another 2 to 6 degrees F by 2100. The increase would be greater in higher latitudes, areas like the United States - on the order of 5 to 10 degrees F. This is a faster rate of change than any that has likely occurred in the last several thousand years. It is difficult to predict with any precision the climate or its impacts in any given area. Using climatic data, we hope to develop a clearer picture of potential climate impacts on different regions of the U.S. Climate change is a major challenge for us. It will take the concerted effort of all the nations of the world to assess and predict climate change and its consequences. We made significant scientific progress with the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. That group of 2000 scientists from around the world met for its second time in 1995 and will convene again in 2000. On the diplomatic front, the meeting last December in Kyoto established a mechanism for translating scientific predictions into political policy.
We need to take steps to minimize the impacts on our children and grandchildren. Our emissions of greenhouse gases have been rising for more than a century, and once in the atmosphere, they remain for a very long time. So it is important that we act soon ... to improve the quality and quantity of the available climatic evidence, ... to help quantify climate and its impacts, ... and to begin reducing our emissions. There are things we can all do to improve our energy efficiency that not only reduce emissions but save us money.
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