The average temperature of Korea has gone at twice the speed of that of the world over the past 80 years, the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) said yesterday.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on world climate change on Feb. 2 to discuss a plan to deal with the warming effect and possible disasters.

From 1912 to 1920, the annual average temperature on the Korean Peninsula was 12 degrees Celsius, but between 1991 and 2000, it jumped to 13.5 degrees, showing an increase of 1.5 degrees in 80 years. This is twice the IPCC report's figure of the world's 0.74 degrees.

Lee Man-ki, director of KMA, said that winter has become shorter by a month over the 80 year period, which is a definite sign of a warming effect.

The organization has calculated what the climate would be like after 100 years using a super computer, and found that if the carbon dioxide levels keep increasing at the current rate, the temperature will rise by 6 degrees and rainfall will jump by 30 percent.

``This year, the average temperature will be 0.5 degrees higher than before at 12.4 degrees,'' Lee said.

The KMA forecast that this summer will be the hottest, even hotter than 1998, which is recorded as the hottest year in Korean forecast history. ``There will be more than 9.8 days of tropical nights,'' said Shin Soon-ho, the administration's forecast policy division.