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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Why do they choose 1950-1980 as the period to compare against? Why not 1920-1950?
Marc Sheppard*:
“And convince you it’s your fault.”
There is the nub of the AGW; Guilt and Fear; no Hope.
“And convince you it’s your fault”.
The AGW Fraud was built on a single pillar: Fear-Guilt.
The single pillar of the AGW Fraud has been pulled down; the Temple of AGW has collapsed.
Great was the fall of it.
…-
“*Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg”
[…]
“Of course, you already know the answer: GISS simply fills in the missing numbers – originally cool as Bolivia contains proportionately more land above 10,000 feet than any other country in the world — with hot ones available in neighboring stations on a beach in Peru or somewhere in the Amazon jungle.
Remember that single station north of 65° latitude which they located in a warm section of northern Canada? Joe D’Aleo explained its purpose:
“To estimate temperatures in the Northwest Territory [boxed in green above], they either have to rely on that location or look further south.”
Pretty slick, huh?
And those are but a few examples. In fact, throughout the entire grid, cooler station data are dropped and “filled in” by temperatures extrapolated from warmer stations in a manner obviously designed to overestimate warming.
And convince you it’s your fault.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
san quintin (04:09:09) :
You were being sarcastic right? RIght?
The alarmists have the spin cycle to maximum warp speed. Can you just imagine what their emails are saying now?
Let us hope there is a very warm place for scientists (in this case, alleged scientists) who abuse the public’s trust.
Torsten Wedin (00:22:30) wrote:
This last decade was the warmest decade of this millenium
NASA wrote:
NASA Research Finds Last Decade was Warmest on Record (~150 years)
Torsten’s spin is more spectacular then NASA’s 😉
Baa Humbug
No, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I’m just intrigued to see how many here thinks that dumping C02 quickly in the atmosphere will have little or no consequence.
ANTHONY –
Hansen clearly has an agenda to push so it’s no surprise that the data is tweaked and manipulated to fit his ends.
See this story in the national Telegraph newspaper about Hansen’s recommendation of a book that calls for an end to civilisation itself:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
The only thing stopping these guys would be a total crop-failure !
Given the lack of agricultural stocks on a worldscale the impact would be far more dramatic than rise in temperature by 2 or 3 degrees celsius .
False prophets flying around the world on imaginary red carpets ?
gerard (02:51:01) :
Are these adjusted figures?
You shouldn’t need to ask. All temperatures must be sanitised to prevent spread of that virulent disease of AGW scepticism, which sadly is spreading like wildfire through the population.
You can tell who has immunity by their repetitive moans of “The science is settled” but who illogically ask for more research money to settle the science all over again.
ghw (03:26:31) :
*sigh*
No.
Just because some innumerate fool decided that some bloke did not have a year ‘zero’ like all children do, does not mean we have to get into this argument every decade/century/millennium.
They all start on ‘0’ and end on ‘9’ (apart from the ‘first’ one, and anyone who likes it different is being daft. No offence meant, but it’s the way we actually mark the decades/centuries/millennia.
And most warming occurs where there are fewest thermometers, or none at all if you look at that bright red spot at the top of the world
The statement that the 2000s were warmer than the 1990s is morally close to the statement that 2005 was warmer than 1995, or that the slope was positive in the 1995-2005 or 1990-2009 intervals.
However, the statement that the warming stopped in the last decade means that the trend is zero or negative in the 2000-2009 interval, which is an entirely different statement. And it is true.
The Telegraph online in the UK has run this, but judging by the article photo it doesn’t appear at first sight to be such an unappealing phenomenon.
The Met office has just sneaked out its ownHadCrut3 annual data
here
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual
But the December 2009 monthly data is still missing.
No announcement, maybe because it does not agree with the GISS data. Hiding the decline maybe?
Anyway, HadCrut3 shows a variance of 0.439c (different base line from GISS) which makes it the 5th warmest on record:
1: 1998
2: 2005
3: 2003
4: 2002
5: 2009
GISS make it the 2nd warmest on record, mainly because they paint the whole of the antarctic and arctic at the same temperature as their nearest temp stations. HadCrut3 ignores the poles as the land based data is so sparse.
Interestingly the satellite record (University of Alabama Huntsville series) shows 2009 to be the 7th hottest in its record. Its ranking is;
1: 1998
2: 2005
3: 2002
4: 2007
5: 2003
6: 2006
7: 2009
Now the UAH data [i]does[/i] include the poles, and so does not need to guess for missing information. So in terms of believability I would rank the studies as:
1: UAH
2: HadCrut3
3: GISS
😉
Has anyone seen the new Alaskan Surf Board? They’re so big 10 people can get on the thing. Understand the one’s they use up on the North Slope beaches are even bigger too, something to do with the humongous size of North Pole waves. And there’s a new stronger suntan loation coming out for Arctic beaches that is 10 times stronger than anything they have in Central Australia. Life’s a beach, never the same from one day to the next. Surf’s Up! (Do you think NASA is a major stockholder in all the new beach property scemes? I believe Disney and NASA are working together on a new Antarctic Tropical Theme Park.)
The credibility factor is now lacking.
Rhodrich (02:20:29) :
The grand experiment continues. Mankind continues to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Even before the debacles of Copenhagen and Climategate, the largest generators of carbon dioxide were not going to cut back.
Cap and Trade is dead. Kyoto is going to be dead, not that it matters.
Whatever our views on AGW, mankind will continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere and the earth will do what it will.
My guess? And this is a guess because I don’t know what is really going to happen until it does.
I think the sun drives our climate, directly or indirectly. Until the sun decides to crank up again, we will be in the short term cooling trend we have seen since 1998. Over the next century, possibly a continuation of the gradual warming we’ve seen since 1850. But here’s the big question, will the earth do another 1940 to 1975 cooling or will the current short term cooling trend become a Dalton type cooling?
Time will tell.
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm
It won’t really matter how many ‘death trains’ deliver their contents. It won’t matter what kind of cars we drive or whether or not we build a lot of solar cells and wind turbines. It won’t matter whether we use nuclear or not.
We are not going to stop generating CO2.
The climate will pretty much do what it was going to do in first place.
Guys….I think everyone agrees that the surface station figures are a such a leap of statistical faith, with so many caveats that we can ignore it…….unless……it concours with the satalellite temps? (I know there are probs with those too). But we also know that Christy & Spencer are not pushing alarmist agendas, so if their findings back up GISS, then we should do some deep thinking. What do the Sats tell us at the mo? Should be a 30yr record yes?
BTW I don’t want to come over all AGW on you, in my heart I think its all a scam, but my head tells me not to relax my skepticism on either side…I’d hate to be wrong!!
I actually applaud this sort of rubbish being publicised. The more there is of it the more the whole AGW business looks ridiculous to the general public.
The fact is that AGW took off in the public consciousness because it did get warmer and we had some hot summers and not very cold winters.
The cause of the warming escapes many people and many journalists and even some scientists or ‘scientists’. But if the cries of ‘wolf, wolf, there really is a wolf this time honest’ continue during a period of obvious hemisphere wide cold the AGW camp just make themselves look ridiculous.
There is more to come, much more. If we really do have a few cool/cold years to come then:
The ‘melting ice caps’ will expand again.
There will be an impact on agricultural prices because of frost damage and crop failures.
Some more brutal winters etc
None of this is to be welcomed but it might be what happens.
At the moment the dominant generation are people who grew up when it was colder than in recent years. Fast foward a few years and we might have a generation with memories of it being a lot warmer when they were growing up.
All of this is beside the point for the causes of warming and cooling but it is very relevant to public perception.
Ironically, due to their importance in the AGW conspiracy, we might find lefties/green leaders supporting the expansion of airports over green belts!
A man asccended the Eiffel tower and jumped off the top. A third of the way down he said ‘thats remarkable, Im in the highest 1 percent of people in Paris!
You would think scientists could get it right.
They can’t make a claim for the decade until the decade is over. The current decade started on 1 Jan 2001 and will end on 31 Dec 2010, more than 11 months away.
Just because the general public can’t get it right doesn’t mean scientists should go along with them.
I know many climate scientists have a problem with this concept but science is not majaority rules. Science is facts. And the fact is there was no year 0 AD (or whichever system you want to use), so the first decade was 1 Jan 1AD to 31 Dec 10AD. Therefore every decade since ENDS with the year that ends in zero (10, 20, 30,.. 1990, 2000, 2010), decades don’t START with years that end in zero.
Sorry just a pet peeve of mine.
If they mention 1998 as part of the ‘cluster’ then what about 1934? That was warmer.
He must have a change of heart. This is his identity. If he leaves, he can’t find work except in a sneaky way. No he and Joe Romm can’t even succeed in selling cars because of their angry and hostile temperaments. To sell cars, they would have to become decent and civil which is a stretch.
Wait a moment. Way back here (at something called norcalblogs.com/watts), it was reported that how Steven McIntyre got NASA to properly calculate GISS, resulting in 1934 being the hottest year on record (in 2007) with 2006 being number 4. Now this press release pegs 2005 as warmest on record, which wasn’t even in the top ten back then, just a few years ago.
And now in the “virtual tie” for second warmest are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2009. In that corrected top ten list reported in 2007, the only 200x year was 2006, with the original list having only 2001 and 2006. How did all those 19xx years get bumped off?
Oh well, at least Climatologist Gavin Schmidt was able to get some time away from his Real Climate duties to make a scientific-sounding statement.