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To: Win Smith who wrote (244)	1/2/2003 6:12:16 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

Temperatures Are Likely to Go From Warm to Warmer nytimes.com [clip ] Even if 2003 does not set a record, many experts say, it almost undoubtedly will follow a generation-long rise in temperatures that has put the planet on course for substantial shifts in drought and storm patterns, continuing and significant retreats of terrestrial ice, and a resulting rise in sea levels in coming decades. This month, American and British climate teams and the World Meteorological Organization reported that 2002 would nudge out 2001 as the second-warmest year since the late 1800's. Some scientists still doubt that the human influence will alter the climate beyond the range of natural variability, which they say has produced significant shifts in past eras and will inevitably do so again. "We don't really know enough about the climate to say with any confidence how much of this warming is natural and how much is caused by human activities," said Dr. John R. Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. But his view is held by an ever-shrinking minority of climate experts, partly because new analyses are questioning some of their conclusions. In 1990, Dr. Christy and a team that included NASA satellite experts pioneered a method for measuring the average temperature of the atmosphere above the surface, using instruments on weather satellites. In a series of papers examining three decades of satellite data, they reported cooling or only slight warming, and the findings were highlighted by skeptics of the greenhouse theory among climatologists and policy makers. A new analysis of the same data by an independent team of scientists suggests that much more warming is under way in the upper atmosphere — more than three times as much as Dr. Christy estimated. These analyses are more in line with surface trends and estimates produced by computer models.