The Warmest Years on Record
Recent global warming studies published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA reach similar conclusions. The last 10 years are the warmest on record, and 2010 temperatures are positioned to surpass even these numbers. Reports the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 1998 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began [in 1880].
And NOAA’s preliminary findings show:
The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record.
As Al Gore writes,
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
But as the data shows, “we can’t wish away climate change.”
