BRITAIN/INTERNATIONAL: UK feels heat on warming.

THE UK has already begun to feel the effects of man-made climate change, a Government-funded report said yesterday.

Temperatures in central England have risen by about 1C since the 1970s, the first of a series of five reports from the UK Climate Impact Programme 08 shows.

Measurements stretching back to 1659 show 2006 was the warmest year yet.

The research also shows severe windstorms have become more frequent in the past few decades - but are no higher than the levels seen at the beginning of the last century.

Sea surface temperatures around the UK have risen by about 0.7C over the past three decades.

The Climate of the United Kingdom and Recent Trends report forms part of a pounds 2 million programme funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which aims to give businesses and families an idea of what climate change will mean.

The project will produce five reports and an interactive website which will aim to provide climate change projections which can be customised by users.

The first report is being published as officials gather in Bali to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal.

The report, which draws mainly on data from the Met Office, showed temperatures had risen by about 0.8C in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the increase had not been attributed to a specific cause.

In Central England July, 2006, was the warmest month since records began, while the top temperature ever recorded in the UK was 38.5C in Faversham, Kent, on August 10, 2003.

The report showed 10 of the 15 warmest calendar years on record, including the top three, occurred in the last two decades.

Sea levels around the UK rose by about 1mm a year in the 20th century, but the rates of rise were higher in the 1990s and 2000s.