Past decade warmest on record, say Nasa scientists
The past decade was the warmest on record, proving that global warming has continued “unabated”, according to Nasa scientists.
"Our planet is five billion years old, and it has been changing constantly all during that time."
Average global temperatures have increased warmed by about 1.5F (0.8C) since 1880, when records began, research showed.
An analysis of global surface temperatures, by Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, found that last year was only a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest on record.
Arctic sea ice thinning dramatically, finds NASAIt found that In the Southern Hemisphere, where countries such as Australia have been ravaged by drought and bushfires, last year was the warmest year on record.
In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature records found an “upward trend” of about 0.36F (0.2C) per decade.
Dr James Hansen, the institute’s director, said the results proved that “global warming has not stopped”.
"There's a contradiction between the results shown here and popular perceptions about climate trends," said Dr Hansen, who was one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of global warming more than two decades ago.
"In the last decade, global warming has not stopped.
"There's substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle.”
He added: “When we average temperature over five or 10 years to minimise that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated.”
In December Dr Hansen said any deal reached at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen would be a “disaster track” for the world.
Nasa said the institute used data from three sources to conduct its temperature analysis.
These included weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures and Antarctic research station measurements.
The Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, uses similar input measurements but does not include large areas of the Arctic and Antarctic where monitoring stations are sparse, Nasa said.
telegraph.co.uk |
