This is the VOA Special English ENVIRONMENT REPORT.

Temperatures around the world continue to rise. United Nationsscientists say they believe two-thousand-two was one of the warmestyears ever measured. The scientists also say they expect the comingyears will get even hotter.

The U-N's World Meteorological Organization reports that lastyear was the second warmest since record keeping began ineighteen-sixty. Nineteen-ninety-eight remains the warmest year evermeasured.

Ken Davidson is the director of the World MeteorologicalOrganization's World Climate Program. He says the ten warmest yearsall happened after nineteen-eighty-seven. Of those ten, ninehappened after nineteen-ninety. He says the rate of temperatureincrease over the past twenty-five years is greater than that overthe past one-thousand years.

Mister Davidson says the organization agrees with scientificfindings that global warming is happening as a result of humanactivities. He says one reason for the higher temperatures is theexpansion of cities. Studies show that cities are hotter than otherareas. Mister Davidson says another influence is the release ofcarbon dioxide and other industrial gases. Industrial gases havebeen shown to increase temperatures in Earth's atmosphere.

The new report says many areas experienced unusual weather intwo-thousand-two. Most of Asia, for example, was warmer than usual.India had unusually high temperatures in April and May. Theextremely hot weather caused hundreds of deaths. There also wereextremely dry conditions across India. Parts of Africa experiencedunusually heavy rains. Yet other areas in Africa had unusually dryweather.

A severe ocean storm hit South Korea in August. It set a newnational record for rainfall. In central Europe, more thanone-hundred people died in flooding caused by heavy rainfall inSeptember. The flooding also resulted in thousands of millions ofdollars in property damage. Yet large parts of North and SouthAmerica had extremely dry weather.

The World Meteorological Organization also reported that amoderate El Nino weather system in the Pacific Ocean is expected tolast until about April. The system has been bringing warmer weatherto the eastern Pacific Ocean since the middle of last year.

This VOA Special English ENVIRONMENT REPORT was written by GeorgeGrow.