01.31.06
Warmest year on record
Forwarded from Rad-Green
January 27, 2006
Counter Currents
www.CounterCurrents.org
NASA: 2005 Was Warmest Year on Record
by
Deborah Zabarenko Reuters
Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth’s surface, and it was
unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday.
All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the
1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual
temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a
statement.
“It’s fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern
meteorological records,” said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New
York City.
“Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it’s even
fair to say that it’s the warmest in the last several thousand years.”
Some researchers had expected 1998 would be the hottest year on record,
notably because a strong El Nino — a warm-water pattern in the eastern
Pacific — boosted global temperatures.
But Shindell said last year was slightly warmer than 1998, even without
any extraordinary weather pattern. Temperatures in the Arctic were
unusually warm in 2005, NASA said.
“That very anomalously warm year (1998) has become the norm,” Shindell
said in a telephone interview.
“The rate of warming has been so rapid that this temperature that we
only got when we had a real strong El Nino now has become something that
we’ve gotten without any unusual worldwide weather disturbance.”
Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed by 1.08 degrees F (0.6 degrees
C), NASA said. Over the past 100 years, it has warmed by 1.44 degrees F
(0.8 degrees C).
Shindell, in line with the view held by most scientists, attributed the
rise to emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane
and ozone, with the burning of fossil fuels being the primary source.
The 21st century could see global temperature increases of 6 to 10
degrees F (3 to 5 degrees C), Shindell said.
“That will really bring us up to the warmest temperatures the world has
experienced probably in the last million years,” he said.
To understand whether the Earth is cooling or warming, scientists use
data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea
surface temperature since 1982, and data from ships for earlier years.
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