NASA Research Finds Last Decade was Warmest on Record, 2009 One of Warmest Years
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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/
For video and still images about this story, visit:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
Source: NASA
