"mrbawana2u" <mrbawana2u@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
> vd scuttle nutts get his science from Andrea Thompson.
2007 Tied for Earth's Second Warmest Year Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
January 16, 2008
The year 2007 has tied 1998 for the Earth's second warmest this century,
NASA
scientists announced today.
Climatologists at the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Sciences (GISS)
in
New York used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite
measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ****ps for
earlier
years to construct a record of global average temperatures going back for
over a
century.
The GISS analysis has 1934, 1998 and 2005 tied as the warmest years in the
United States (with 2005 being the warmest globally).
The eight warmest years globally in the past century have all occurred
since
1998, and the 14 warmest years have all occurred since 1990.
The greatest observed warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, which
experienced
a record sea ice melt this summer, opening up the fabled Northwest Passage
for
the first time.
"As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the
strong
warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to
the
effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases," said NASA GISS Director
James
E. Hansen.
A minor flaw in the GISS record discovered last year did not affect this
analysis, the scientists noted.
Hansen says that warming can be expected to continue, with another record
warm
year coming soon, though it is unlikely to be 2008.
"Barring a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly
exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next few years, at the
time of
the next El Nino , because of the background warming trend attributable to
continuing increases of greenhouse gases," Hansen said.
El Nino tends to have a warming effect on temperatures in many areas,
while
the
volcanic ash that an eruption spews into the air has a cooling effect.
While most scientists agree the planet is warming, the trend does not
proceed
constantly upward year-by-year. Other factors cause hikes and dips in the
generally trajectory of the global temperature chart, which has been
mostly
trending upward since the beginning of the 20th century.
|
