From NASA’s press release
NASA Research Finds Last Decade was Warmest on Record, 2009 One of Warmest Years
From NASA GISTEMP- Click image for original source
WASHINGTON — A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.
Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The past year was a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record, putting 2009 in a virtual tie with a cluster of other years –1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 — for the second warmest on record.
“There’s always interest in the annual temperature numbers and a given year’s ranking, but the ranking often misses the point,” said James Hansen, GISS director. “There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.”
January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Looking back to 1880, when modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, although there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.
In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880.
“That’s the important number to keep in mind,” said GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt. “The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years.”
The near-record global temperatures of 2009 occurred despite an unseasonably cool December in much of North America. High air pressures from the Arctic decreased the east-west flow of the jet stream, while increasing its tendency to blow from north to south. The result was an unusual effect that caused frigid air from the Arctic to rush into North America and warmer mid-latitude air to shift toward the north. This left North America cooler than normal, while the Arctic was warmer than normal.
“The contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the United States’ temperature does not affect the global temperature much,” Hansen said.
GISS uses publicly available data from three sources to conduct its temperature analysis. The sources are weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research station measurements.
Other research groups also track global temperature trends but use different analysis techniques. The Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom uses similar input measurements as GISS, for example, but it omits large areas of the Arctic and Antarctic where monitoring stations are sparse.
Although the two methods produce slightly differing results in the annual rankings, the decadal trends in the two records are essentially identical.
“There’s a contradiction between the results shown here and popular perceptions about climate trends,” Hansen said. “In the last decade, global warming has not stopped.”
For more information about GISS’s surface temperature record, visit:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
* For more information about why the GISS data isn’t much to be trusted, particularly at the northern latitudes, see this article
GHCN – GIStemp Interactions – The Bolivia Effect
GHCN – Up North, Blame Canada!, Comrade
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I’m still wondering what the problem is. The “officially” recognized warming over the past 100+ years is still well within normal operational parameters of natural climate change. Therefore, it’s clear that man has very little resultant impact if any on climate. To say otherwise actually goes against the latest observed results produced by NASA.
David Alan (01:44:28) :
“With continental plate shifts and seduction and volcanism, how can we blame sea rise as nothing more than a natural phenomena. ”
Should be “subduction”.
And I’ll bet that the reason all the temperature records look the same even from different “official” sources is that if one of them produced a graph showing the truth their work would have been discredited and the funding discontinued.
So they all probably adjusted the data so as to produce graphs like the “officially accepted ones”.
And in reponse to Trigge, subtracting 0.8 from the higher value to match a discontinuous previous value is just as valid as adding to the previous to “hide” the discontinuity.
Why didn’t they do 50% additions and 50% subtractions and smooth the result?
Robert E. Phelan (00:38:05) :
Robert, I am also beginning despair. If a scientist told me that water was wet, I’d now have a hard time believing it. Sadly, that elevated status we once believed was almost “god-like” is now degenerating to the level of suspicion preciously reserved for used car and door to door vacuum cleaner salesmen. Actually in comparison, the salesmen appear to be pillars of virtue. Such a decline – and it’s a travesty we can’t explain it.
Zorro at 59:51 posted one of THE BEST reported stories on the manipulation of data i have seen thus far!! I HIGHLY recommend it goes up on the main page!! (And gets passed to anyone and everyone you know!!)
i am emailing it to everyone n my facebook and in my Email Address Book.
You can find it here:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81559212.html
Re: Rhodrich (Jan 22 02:20),
Black still not addressing the real points, but the comments to his article are! And strongly!
Even the Beeb can’t keep the party line for much longer
GISS shows + deg C anomaly for Central Europe.
Our only truly rural station, Lomnicky stit observatory, shows 51-80 base period 0.7 deg C colder than 1998-2008.
So GISS is only 0.3-1.3 deg C off mark.
There is no end to their mendacity. The Mercator projection they use conveniently distorts the representation of land area so that the allegedly warming polar regions appear far bigger than they really are. And I like the idea of Antarctic measurements – plural measurements, singular station.
Just for the records:
A decade starts with year xxx1 and ends with year xxx0 (Just compare it to the “official” reference-period: 1951-1980)
So, since we haven’t finished the current decade yet, there is no warmest decade on record.
And if you take a look at the true data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=12&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=0112&year1=2000&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg you will see, which kind of swiss cheese the warmest decade on record really is…
“NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880.”
Ha Ha
Ha Ha Ha Ha
HA HA HA HA HA HA
HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH!
No more, no more please, you’re killing me.
You couldn’t make it up could you? Although come to think of it…
This report reminds me of the mindset taken by Wall Street on the economy.; Illusions of prosperity.
NASA, GISS; Illusions of global warming.
I simply cannot believe that this is the same NASA that put men on the moon. It must be another bunch using the same acronym:
Nuts And Shysters Association?
Nincompoops And Silly Asses?
Never Any Science Allowed?
No wonder the Arctic looks warm when comparing with 1951-1980. Here’s a long running Siberian station: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222202920005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Note how warm the 1930-1950 period was!
Now remind me again … How many thermometers are there in that big block of orange at the top?
So much agenda, so little time.
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degrees Celsius, then this would be significant for the global average—but we’d still have to explain the land blip. – Tom Wigley (and yes I know he is not NASA)
Looking at the image of temperature anomalies, it seems to me that the majority of warming anomalies are concentrated over land, while the sea areas excluding the Arctic generally show very slight cooling, no change or very slight warming. The land based data are from suitably homogenised and adjusted weather stations whilst the sea based data come from satellite measurements, not withstanding the fact that the satellite era only commenced in 1979 while the anomalies are against a 1951-80 average.
It seems to me that there are two possible explanations for this.
1. The land based data has been corrupted with UHI and other “adjustments.”
2. The anomalies are correct and therefore the sea is now cooling as compared with the land and that with its much greater heat content, it is an indication that the warming period has come to an end and we can expect a sustained period of stable temperatures or even cooling.
Whichever explanation is true, should it not be the duty of Mr Hansen to explain this difference in his summary?
Taking this analysis a stage further, is the best compromise for a global temperature just simply the satellite based sea surface temperature? All the land based data have been corrupted with UHI and other adjustments and the guardians of these data sets acknowledge that complete coverage is not a requirement by way of them having deleted the vast majority of weather stations anyway. Likewise the UAH and RSS records are of the lower troposphere and therefore are only a proxy for what is happening at ground (or sea) level.
You are all missing the point….
The general public doesn’t want scientific truths, they want someone to tell them what is happening and all most have is the MSM which loves to report ‘records’. In a few months from now many people will honestly, if misguidedly, say at parties, in coffee shops and pubs or round the water cooler that the last decade was the warmest on record. They won’t remember where they read or heard it and that won’t matter because they will have integrated it into their world view and it will be as good as a fact to them and all they dispense the information to.
When the climategate furore dies down, which is dependent on how long the dedicated people who run sites like these can keep up the amount of work needed to keep it current, what people will remember is the ‘record decade’. The only thing keeping us all from the CTS scams is the dedication of volunteers at WUWT, CA and others and that is a finite resource. Remember, what the general public sees is so-called ‘respected scientists’ from major institutions who are obviously passionate about their work and appear to truly believe in it – that is a strong message whether it is true or not.
I continue to keep my fingers crossed that the truth is revealed and this craziness will come to an end but the longer it goes on, the more concerned I get that the luddites will eventually triumph.
Sorry for the rant, I am not diminishing any of the commenters on here, I think there are many valid points made by people smarter than me, I just don’t think the GP cares and I speak as a non-scientist who believes we are about to flush civilization down the toilet so I would love to be proved wrong.
Outside of the Alarmists blogesphere no one is really listening. BTW, Hansen will be 70 next year. Perhaps it is time for him to retire.
Interesting that a number of posters here find the recent warm 2009 hard to accept. Don’t they know that if you put a whole load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere it will (in the absence of a negative forcing) have a warming effect? If they don’t know this then I suggest they go back to school. It’s high-school physics.
!! A must read !!
Now we know why it has been “so warm”.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
when ever i see GISS i just ignore what ever they say. I use to respect hansen but after seeing how political he is and now writing books like al bore, as well as data manipulation, who can believe any thing he puts forth.
But sadly, as with most ‘alarmist’ propaganda, this is the story that the media will peddle.
We may know this data has been fiddled and I have no doubt honest scientists here and across the web will put this report into a proper perspective. But to my mind a huge problem remains. No amount of self-congratulation here about our ability to see the truth, and no amount of honest science discussed here, will do much to correct the propaganda message which the public and politicians will hear and continue to follow.
In almost all cases the ‘alarmists’ are still being allowed to make all the plays. Not only does alarmism sell but the whole AGW debate is being played completely to their rules. They make an often ridiculous claim then we moderates, sceptics and realists end up playing catchup. Even good spokesmen like Lord Monckton or Christopher Booker are forced to pedal a mainly negative message simply rebutting the extreme claims. Because the realists need to be careful to stay absolutely within the true science and be honest they can only defend, they have almost nothing to attack with.
I think someone needs to fight the ‘warmist’ dishonesty by their own methods, we need some good publicity-attracting scare stories of our own that can be fed to the media. Wind generators shredding a few birds or blighting the view are not bad enough. We need some headline grabbing stories to detail and underline the serious problems that might happen if we follow the ‘alarmist’ agenda. We need to play by their rules and start populating their playing field with some real scary downsides.
I guess Anthony may not approve of ‘misusing’ science even in a good cause to get our own back so it wouldn’t be done here. But even so a couple of things come to mind. Rather than us realists just saying ‘Carbon trading will impoverish us all’ have any social economists tried to predict how a US or UK family might live in 2100 in abject poverty with limited carbon credits and all jobs outsourced to India and China?
On a science tack, what’s the chance that windfarms may cause ground vibrations which increase earthquake risks? This is just as true as some of the extreme ‘warmist’ nonsense we hear and carries a common sense value making it very hard to completely debunk as an idea. Has anyone even thought about it?
To those who query why this report was posted: folk such as I NEED to see what rubbish the AGW church is posting, so we can be alerted to the MSM coverage which will follow, and can do our best to debunk it with our circle of friends and aquaintences.
I mostly get shouted at, of course, because far too any still believe the AGW hysteria; regarding MSM like the BBC, and institutions like the UN, as authoritative. They just don’t believe that the data and analysis is crap, and take the band wagon of politicians as showing it must be true. Still, progress here and there: keep blogging, emailing, talking in Pubs (bars), writing to politicians etc. Emphasise what else the £ & $ could be used for!
“GISTEMP is showing record 2009 combined surface temperatures for the
Southern Hemisphere, while the 2009 TLT anomalies are far from record
levels.”
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/01/was-2009-warmest-year-on-record-in.html&usg=AFQjCNH2KG0-dSl6yIpjUwMmxQSQozz9rw
So NASA says average global temperatures have gone up by 0.8 degC since 1880. Also “That’s the important number to keep in mind”. Important? 0.8 degC? Huh.
Remind me again please, when did the Little Ice Age end?
In other news…
o Pope confirms he’s still a Catholic
o Bears confess to defecating in woods
etc. etc.
Dave
“David Alan (01:44:28) :
We are witnessing a cooling process that which no living person has ever experienced.
Period.”
It was colder in the 70’s, just. And, hang on a sec let me check….yup I am still alive.