Across Globe, Extremes of Heat and Rain

A monsoon dropped 14 inches of rain in one day across many parts of South Asia this month. Germany had its wettest May on record, and April was the driest there in a century. Temperatures in Bulgaria reached 113 degrees last month and 90 degrees in Moscow in late May, shattering longtime records.

The year still has almost five months to go, but it has already experienced a range of weather extremes that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization said yesterday is well outside the historical norm and is a precursor of much greater weather variability as global warming transforms the planet.

The warming trend confirmed in February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- based on the finding that 11 of the past 12 years had higher average ground temperatures than any others since formal temperature recording began -- appears to have continued with a vengeance into 2007. The WMO reported that January and April were the warmest worldwide ever recorded.
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