February Was Warmest on Record
.c The Associated Press
By GEIR MOULSON
GENEVA (AP) - Due to El Nino, last month was the world's warmest February since global record-keeping began in 1856.
In a report Tuesday on the impact of El Nino, the World Meteorological Organization said the average air temperature around the world was 1.35 degrees higher than normal for the month.
``We must caution that this does not indicate temperature change for the whole planet, although it does show how unusually strong this current El Nino really is,'' agency spokeswoman Eirah Gorre-Dale said.
The Northern Hemisphere had its warmest February since 1950, the report said.
The El Nino report predicted a return to normal between June and August, slightly later than previous forecasts, which had called for El Nino-caused storms to end in May.
The large pool of abnormally warm water in the eastern Pacific that causes the phenomenon has begun to shrink, the report said.
Conditions in Indonesia, northern South America and southern Africa are expected to continue to be drier than usual, the report said - giving little hope that rain in Indonesia will douse forest fires fanned by the dry conditions.
Meanwhile, unusually wet conditions are expected to continue over the coasts of Ecuador, Peru and southern Brazil, where forecasts predict rainfall ``far above normal'' in March through July.
The report said heavy rainfall over the Indian Ocean and eastern Africa eased during February. Disastrous flooding in eastern Africa has lessened for the first time since October, it said.
National average rainfall in the United States was at its third-highest level for the month of February since 1895, said the report, while average temperature was the sixth warmest on record.
Hawaii was unusually dry in January and February, while Hong Kong experienced its wettest year ever in 1997.
The high temperatures in Europe, North America and East Asia were caused by warm tropical air being pulled north by a change in jet-stream winds, said Gorre-Dale.
Temperatures in Brunei, on the fire-ravaged island of Borneo, matched the previous highest temperature of 100.4 degrees - recorded during the strong El Nino of 1982-83.
Conditions in southeast Asia were so dry some islands in East Timor had little or no rain during their usual December-January rainy season, the report said.
``These global effects are not all attributable to El Nino; there are other factors,'' spokeswoman Gorre-Dale cautioned.
Weather experts don't yet know whether the reverse pattern, La Nina, is likely to develop later this year, the report said.
La Nina, a pool of colder-than-normal water in the Pacific, has the opposite effect of El Nino, bringing heavy rain where it was dry and drought where it was wet.