Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880.
The analysis found 2010 approximately 1.34 F warmer than the average global surface temperature from 1951 to 1980. To measure climate change, scientists look at long-term trends. The temperature trend, including data from 2010, shows the climate has warmed by approximately 0.36 F per decade since the late 1970s.
“If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long,” said James Hansen, the director of GISS.
The analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperature and Antarctic research station measurements. A computer program uses the data to calculate temperature anomalies — the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same period during 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period acts as a baseline for the analysis.
The resulting temperature record closely matches others independently produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.
The record temperature in 2010 is particularly noteworthy, because the last half of the year was marked by a transition to strong La Nina conditions, which bring cool sea surface temperatures to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
“Global temperature is rising as fast in the past decade as in the prior two decades, despite year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature,” Hansen and colleagues reported in the Dec. 14, 2010, issue of Reviews of Geophysics.
A chilly spell also struck this winter across northern Europe. The event may have been influenced by the decline of Arctic sea ice and could be linked to warming temperatures at more northern latitudes.
Arctic sea ice acts like a blanket, insulating the atmosphere from the ocean’s heat. Take away that blanket, and the heat can escape into the atmosphere, increasing local surface temperatures. Regions in northeast Canada were more than 18 degrees warmer than normal in December.
The loss of sea ice may also be driving Arctic air into the middle latitudes. Winter weather patterns are notoriously chaotic, and the GISS analysis finds seven of the last 10 European winters warmer than the average from 1951 to 1980. The unusual cold in the past two winters has caused scientists to begin to speculate about a potential connection to sea ice changes.
“One possibility is that the heat source due to open water in Hudson Bay affected Arctic wind patterns, with a seesaw pattern that has Arctic air downstream pouring into Europe,” Hansen said.
“18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.” from ‘The Unabomber and the Left’ at http://sanfransanity.blogspot.com/
Pat
what if anything does that have to do with this?
I thought you were going to try hard to give us any reason to take you seriously…and then you go posting things like that.
James Hansen is a leftist philosopher. My posting explains him and his kind, especially here – “They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior).”.
2010 was not the hottest year on record. 1981 was much hotter.
Hansen has been discredited in the eyes of real scientists.
Pat…
I mean this in the nicest possible way…but thats the biggest load of shit I have ever heard.
James Hansen aside (do you think he is the only person working at NASA?), I feel like your comments over the past couple months show that you have only the slightest grip on science, and that you allow your political views color your views more than is prudent.
I am still 100% unconvinced that anything you write should be taken seriously and you have given me no reason to assume otherwise.
Naib,
Today is Martin Luther King Day. Now, Martin Luther King was a great man, he was cut from the heroic cloth, he was a man of great deeds, great valor, and great vision. But that being so, did he deserve to have a national holy day named in his honor? Most Americans didn’t think so, when MLK’s widow and friends were making it the cause of the day. 70% of Americans were opposed to the propositon of an MLK Day back then. But the pro MLK Day folks pushed it along and there was no advantage to any politician to oppose it. Any politician that broke from the herd and opposed it was alone and subject to abuses of the people promoting MLK Day.
I relate this story to you to explain how a con man like Hansen et al can pull off their scam of Globaloney. There is no advantage to the well paid crowd at NASA to object to anything Hansen et al have been doing. They don’t want to give up their big checks and comfortable station in life for anything, especially since they’re likely milking that cash cow as much as Hansen is.
And the media also milks that cow. Why do oil companies buy advertising? It’s because if they don’t buy it, the media will beat them up. So they buy advertising and pass on the expense to the consumer. And that plays into why the media was pushing Globaloney too, and like your little group of ‘scientists’, were ignoring any evidence and testimony that contradicted the narrative of Globaloney. Fortunately, that ‘big lie’ was just too big and the media oligarchy has been discredited by the citizen journalism of the internet.
I have a friend. She’s a lefty. Facts and reason don’t register with her because she is a lefty. So, you’re “100% unconvinced”, I’m not at all surprised.
More on Hansen here-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/17/china-style-dictatorship-of-climatologists/