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 agree with Claud Harvey and the others, just because GISS is a mess it does not mean it can’t be right twice a day, like a broken clock. We should only laugh at GISS if our weapon of choice, UAH, contradicts GISS wildly.
It looks like UAH & GISS may not be too far apart. Which means GISS despite its incredibly unbelieveable infill is coming up with the goods (that stuck in my throat).
So…….do we now diss UAH or look to a reason.
Is it the oceans actually giving up the heat in the pipeline, a possible short term affect and thus the sign of impending cold? Or is the atmosphere actually getting warmer, a result of El Nino on top of a couple of LA Ninas making the anomaly high. Or is it the dreaded CO2 after all. I still can’t buy the idea of CO2, it would be all to convienient to the politics in play. But in truth the world has not chilled enough to ‘basket’ the 90s EL Ninos…its dropped a gnats and plateaued.
Is this still the ongoing warming from the LIA?
So many questions.
Hansen says:
“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.”
The NOAA disagrees.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/ann/bams/full-report.pdf
NOAA report: State of the Climate in 2008, pg 24
“El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a strong driver of interannual global mean temperature variations. ENSO and non-ENSO contributions
can be separated by the method of Thompson et al. (2008) (Fig. 2.8a). The trend in the ENSO-related component for 1999–2008 is +0.08±0.07°C decade–1, fully accounting for the overall observed trend. The trend after removing ENSO (the “ENSO-adjusted” trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade–1, implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature
rise.”
1999-2008 saw an ENSO adjusted trend of 0.00c. Obiviously, this period being analyzed is one year earlier than Hansen is talking about, but 2009 was also an El Nino year, which began in June, so I doubt the ENSO adjusted trend changed much.
Hansen also says:
“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.”
Well the NOAA analysis above was done using HadCrut3 Data, which does not suggest that after adjusting for ENSO that “global warming is continuing unabated”.
Also, I find it interesting that Hansen never actually quantifies the last decade in this release. He talks about the last decade but only quantifies longer trends, and ignores actually putting a number to the claims about the last decade. I wonder why.
John Finn (05:48:27) :
UAH -0.05 ; 0.06 ; 0.22
GISS -0.06 ; 0.08 ; 0.28
the UAH measured troposphere should warm faster than GISS, indicating a warming bias of approx. 0.1 deg or 30%. If this bias is attributable to land only, the land warming bias would be around 100%.
add similar bias due to the downward correction before the satellite era, or more, as there is no crosscheck possibility, making that period ideal to hide the decline.
then the question arises – where the heck is the warming since the 1930s ?
Check out this latest item debunking GISS temperature data records at American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
Unless temperatures take a serious downturn (which can’t be adjusted out), I predict the next 10 years will be the warmest in history. The Team will do it’s best to keep the fraud going for as long as possible. After all, they have a financial interest in WARMING.
By the way, some real warming wouldn’t be bad, but I just don’t want man-made warming to be a result of the way it is recorded and adjusted, even if the record doesn’t show any warming.
GISS understands that headlines sway opinions. As long as they can continue to adjust the adjustments, the higher highs are likely to continue.
I challenge Hansen to provide a graph of El Nino/La Nina 3 month running averages graphed with global 3 month running averages, graphed with CO2 three month running averages. Using raw data, not value added data. I dare you. In other words, prove your premise. Do the research and report it like it is supposed to be done. For once.
There are a couple of glaciers forming in the parking lot of the Galleria right now. They sure try their darndest to get rid of them though.
“Why it is sometimes wise to hide the ‘orignal’ data”
– Reinhard Boehm of the Central Office for Weather and Geodynamics in Vienna.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/01/guest-contribution-from-reinhard-bohm.html
John Finn (05:48:27) :
I’ve just been checking the decadal averages for both GISS and UAH over the past ~30 years. To provide a fair comparison I’ve used the satellite period (1979-1998) as the base period for the anomalies.
The respective decadal average anomalies for 1980s, 1990s & 2000s are as follows:
UAH -0.05 ; 0.06 ; 0.22
GISS -0.06 ; 0.08 ; 0.28
I am yet to be convinced that GISS are guilty of large scale fraud.
I just checked the period from 2003. I chose 2003 because UAH started using AQUA in 2003, so the last 7 years has the most reliable satellite measurements. Hadcrut is missing data for the last couple of months, but at least for the given data, the downward trend is almost identical to that of UAH, while GISS is almost flat:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2003/mean:11/plot/uah/from:2003/mean:11/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2003/mean:11/plot/gistemp/from:2003/trend/plot/uah/from:2003/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2003/trend
And still they soldier on with manufactured data. I can only think its because enough people still support the AGW theory to encourage them their belief they can make it through the gauntlet of doubt. Puts me in mind of the black knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
A member survey of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, Geophysicists of Alberta of which I am a member (chemical engineer) shows 68% DO NOT believe carbon dioxide from human activity drives climate change. I can personally verify the debate in the pages of our monthly journal rages on. Anyone announcing the science is settled would find themselves dodging to avoid getting hit in the fray.
Anthony,
I am sure you have read this http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf
whereas a peer reviewed report from NOAA supposedly debunks your work on poor temperture stations causing a skewed warmer data base……..John
Interesting that the fox in the henhouse is writing the paper!
REPLY: Well aware, look for my rebuttal in the next few days – A
I have a new way to measure global warming locally. Last winter in Hawaii, by this time I had worn pajamas to bed 12 times, this year? Only 6 times. So it is 50% warmer here this winter. OMG! We’re doomed!
On a more sane note, in 1992 we had Hurricane Iniki which strengthened over warmer tropical waters (EL Nino Effect). Since then, the ocean temps have cooled around Hawaii and hurricanes typically die out before reaching us. If waters were warming, you would see many more hurricanes striking land in the middle of the Pacific. I am interested to see what happens with the El Nino over the next few Hurricane seasons but this is one way you can check against the claims of the alarmists.
OT but somewhat interesting.
I went to check on that 1.5% surface area number for the contiguous United States, from here (the IAEA) I got this link
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
to the CIA Factbook.
Three times now, I’ve gotten this error message from Earthlink, my ISP (emphasis added):
We are sorry, facebook cannot be found.
*sigh*
Is the Earth receiving an unusually large amount of cosmic radiation today causing strange computer glitches, or is the internet just having “one of those days”?
Nik Marshall-Blank (06:36:17) :
BTW the values that Kadaka and I are questioning only relate to GISS US Temperatures but how can an accepted temperature anomoly such as 1953 which was 0.91,then after McIntyre became 0.90 and now is 0.87 be correct?
Why do the numbers change?
Ask NOAA:
“Sep. 10, 2007: The year 2000 version of USHCN data was replaced by the current version (with data through 2005). In this newer version, NOAA removed or corrected a number of station records before year 2000. Since these changes included most of the records that failed our quality control checks, we no longer remove any USHCN records. The effect of station removal on analyzed global temperature is very small, as shown by graphs and maps available here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/
san quinton (04:09:09) – Please see Bob Tisdale’s post at (01:28:52)
Someone else mentioned it, but if this was the warmest decade and the southern hemisphere is abnormally warm, why has antarctic ice been above normal, and remains at or above the mean?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Anthony,
And what in your posting is the definition of something that cannot be “trusted?”
Friends:
So, the article reports that NASA GISTEMP says;
“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.”
and James Hansen asserts;
“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.”
OK, for sake of argument, let us accept the above statements as being true (although they are extremely dubious as the leaked CRU emails prove) and consider what they mean if they are true.
The NASA GISTEMP “record” is very short and dates from about 1880. But several studies indicate that the globe has been warming from the Little Ice Age since about 1700 (e.g. Beltrami et al “Long-term tracking of climate change by underground temperatures”, Geophysical Research Letters v.12 (2005) )”. Importantly, global temperature has fallen since its peak in 1998. Hence, of course recent global temperatures are among the “hottest” recorded.
Using “average temperature over five or ten years “ hides the decline since 1998. Indeed, it is a statistical trick to hide the fact that the GISTEMP record shows no statistically significant warming since 1995.
Of course the most recent decade is warmer than any other in the GISTEMP ”record”. Similarly, a person who walks up a mountain is still high soon after he has started down the other side.
Importantly, it is worthless information that the GISTEMP global temperatures averaged over decades shows the most recent decade to be the hottest. At issue is why temperature rose through the twentieth century and has shown no significant rise recently.
Indeed, there is good reason to anticipate that the fluctuations around a value of global temperature of the last decade will continue for another two decades. This is because the climate varies in cycles that are overlaid on each other, and two of them are worthy of especial note.
There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP: indeed, there is no reason to suppose the causes of these two warming periods differ.
And there is an apparent ~60 year oscillation that coincides with variations to the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This caused cooling to ~1910, then warming to ~1940, then cooling to ~1970, then warming to 1998, then cooling since.
So, if these cycles continue when the ~60 year oscillation returns to a warming phase around 2030 either warming will resume until the globe reaches temperatures of the MWP, or cooling will continue until the globe reaches temperatures of the LIA.
Hence, the fact that it has been warm in the last decade tells nothing about whether it will get warmer or colder in the next few decades. All sensible people will hope for warming.
Richard
We have to expose the thermometer genocide and the rewriting of the past of GISS to discredit NASA’s “warmest” claims. A lot of people still believe the MSM – i wouldn’t call them leftists but mostly apolitical. It must be exposed that GISTEMP is a fraudster’s work and that the fraudster is Hansen. This is the key.
If the satellite data differs from earth based measurements, I would say, better check out what’s wrong with that satellite.
But that is just me, I have a basic mistrust of mechanical things. They tend to break.
““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.””
Except that Hansen does not seem to realize (or care) that the issue hasn’t been the last decade for some time. It is now something like twelve years.
From the press release:
Since all these years are in a”virtual tie”, I read this as an explicit admission by NASA that there has not been any “significant” warming for 12 years!
kadaka ,
try this link to the factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
A bit off topic, but Richard Black, BBC hero, has managed to assess the state of climate politics, without even mentioning climategate.
Outrageous.
http://blackswhitewash.com/2010/01/22/richard-black-ignores-the-ten-ton-elephant-again/