Paris weather, highs lows, rain etc

a nice table is shown at

http://goeurope.about.com/gi/dynamic...2F%2Fwww.usato
day.com%2Fweather%2Fclimate%2Fwparis.htm


The warmest ever (until last summer) was 99°F in August and the
coldest, 1°F.

The wet month is January, 20 out of 31 days



The site

http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/globalcl..._in_europe.php


FIGURE 1 below shows the exceptional temperature of summer 2003 and that
it* was over 1 C warmer than the 2nd warmest summer in Europe since 1900:
namely 1947. Why was the summer of 2003 so warm?* Anthropogenic global
warming might be offered as an obvious explanation especially as warming in
summer up to 4.5 C is predicted for the 2080s under the UKCIP02 predictions.
However, this New Scientist article cautions against jumping to such
conclusions.

The article itself is:


Europe's weird weather warms debate

18:16*05*August*03

NewScientist.com news service

A scorching heat wave in Europe and a spate of forest fires has re-ignited
the debate over whether global warming can be blamed for an apparent
increase in the world's weird weather.

Scientists agree that no one yet knows the answer to this question, but they
point out that an increase in the number and severity of extreme events is
exactly what their models of a warmer world predict.

"The weather we've seen over the last few days is entirely consistent with
what we're likely to see over the next few decades," says John Turnpenny, at
the Tyndall Centre for climate change research in Norwich, UK. "We're likely
to see such a heat spell in London every year."

Extreme weather conditions are affecting all parts of Europe.

€ In the UK, meteorologists predict a fair chance that the country will
record 100°F (37.8°C) for the first time this week, beating the previous
record of 98.8°F (37.1°C) from August 1990.

€ In Portugal nine people have been killed in the worst wave of forest fires
in recent history. Western North America is also facing another bad year for
burning forests.

€ In Switzerland, melting ice has contributed to a record number of climbing
accidents in the Alps.

€ The heat in Germany has already cost agriculture more than 2002's
disastrous floods, while in Spain the price of chickens has soared as the
heat reportedly killed more than a million birds.

Such weather events fit in well with climate models that predict the effects
of global warming driven by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The
UK's meteorological office, for example, says the UK is set to get warmer
and drier.

By 2080 there will be, at worst, 50 per cent less rain than there was in the
1990s. Average summer temperatures are set to rise by up to 3.5 degrees,
while temperatures swings will be wilder, with the top 10 per cent of daily
highs soaring as much as 7 degrees.


Cause and effect

But scientists caution that just because extreme weather fits with model
predictions, that does not prove that global warming is the cause.

"People lump extreme events into one basket and use it to strengthen their
arguments about climate change. But you can't do that," says Simon Brown, a
climate change expert at the UK's Hadley Centre in Bracknell, Berkshire. "We
can't say that one causes the other. We're not at that point yet."

In July, the World Meteorological Organization warned that "extreme weather
events might increase". But Ken Davidson, director of the World Climate
Program and a contributor to the statement, says media reports linking such
weather to climate change were overblown. "It certainly isn't clear at this
point," he told New Scientist . "We were very careful to use the word
'might'."

It is even difficult for researchers to say that there are more extreme
events now than there were in the past, because there is no agreed-upon
definition for the word "extreme", notes Brown. This makes it hard to
compile reliable statistics.

Davidson adds that drawing up a list of weird weather events may look
impressive, but must be carefully done to be meaningful: "There's always
strange weather."