GENEVA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Weather and climate have been marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

    Those extreme weather conditions included unusual flooding in Asia, heatwaves and heavy rains in Europe and snowfall in South Africa and South America, the UN weather agency said in a statement.

    In January and April it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89 degrees Celsius warmer than average for January and 1.37 degrees Celsius warmer than average for April, the agency said.

    "The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," WMO scientist Omar Baddour told reporters in Geneva.

    Baddour said the extreme weather conditions in 2007 had largely been predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    There has been an increasing trend in the extreme events observed during the last 50 years, particularly heavy precipitation events, hot days, hot nights and heat waves, according to a joint assessment report released by the WMO and IPCC.

    The IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.