Last decade warmest on record

Washington, January 22 (ANI): A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists has found that the last decade was the warmest on record, with 2009 being one of the warmest years in the period.

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," he added.

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," he added.

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. (ANI)