2014 shaping up to be hottest year in history
Published:Wednesday | July 2, 2014 | 12:00 AM
Jodi-Ann Gilpin, Gleaner Writer
Jeffery Spooner, director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, has urged Jamaicans to do their part to curb the impact of climate change amid projections that 2014 is on track to becoming the hottest year in recorded history.
According to Spooner, a release from the World Meteorological Organization has indicated that globally, May has been the hottest month so far and that the time is becoming increasingly warm.
"May 2014 has been the hottest May so far globally. For us here in Jamaica, there are variations in temperature, so we will have some exceptionally hot days and hot nights, which is consistent with the inter-governmental panel on climate change assessment report findings," he declared.
Spooner stressed, however, that there was a lot that citizens could do to reduce the impact.
"For small-island developing states, our contribution to green-house gas emissions is minuscule compared to the global average, but that does not mean that we can't do anything to lesson our contribution because we all know that global warming has a lot to do with human activity," Spooner told The Gleaner.
"Whatever mitigation we can do in our burning of fossil fuel will be good for us. I'm one person that believes that we must play our part and that there is so much we can do in the reduction of global emission in order to lessen the impact of ongoing changes within our environment, " he said.