2007 was tied as Earth's second warmest year

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.

Goddard Institute researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years.

The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth. Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007.

"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 James Hansen, director of NASA GISS.

"It is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with truly exceptional global mean temperature," said Hansen. "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."

The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

A minor data processing error found in the GISS temperature analysis in early 2007 does not affect the present analysis. The data processing flaw was failure to apply NOAA adjustments to United States Historical Climatology Network stations in 2000-2006, as the records for those years were taken from a different data base (Global Historical Climatology Network). This flaw affected only 1.6% of the Earth’s surface (contiguous 48 states) and only the several years in the 21st century.

The data processing flaw did not alter the ordering of the warmest years on record and the global ranks were unaffected. In the contiguous 48 states, the statistical tie among 1934, 1998 and 2005 as the warmest year(s) was unchanged. In the current analysis, in the flawed analysis, and in the published GISS analysis, 1934 is the warmest year in the contiguous states (but not globally) by an amount (magnitude of the order of 0.01°C) that is an order of magnitude smaller than the certainty.

Source: Goddard Space Flight Center

   

• NotParker - Jan 16, 2008
  • Rank: 3.4 / 5 (5)
  Its all Urban Heat Island effects.
  
  The "warming" is miniscule and would barely rate except they set the baseline as being near the mid 1970's, the coolest period in the last 90 years.
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• out7x - Jan 17, 2008
  • Rank: 2.6 / 5 (5)
  Way too little data to make any conclusions.
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• wesgeorge - Jan 17, 2008
  • Rank: 3.7 / 5 (3)
  It's sad to see the Goddard Space Flight Center reduced to issuing Soviet-style triumphal propaganda statements. I suppose their days of great science are long gone now that they are led by True Believers.
  
  It's interesting that the flaw in their data processing takes so much of the article to debunk. Of course, what GISS doesn't mention is that the only 1.6% of the planet effected by the flaw accounts for almost 85% of their global historical data if not more.
  
  The truth is that the historical record is so polluted with UHI, instrument changes, massive gaps and a myriad of other inconsistencies that the error bars are more like 1.0c, not 0.1c.
  
  btw, Hansen doesn't acknowledge the Medieval Warming Period or the Meander Minimum either. He fanatically believes that today represents a 2,000 plus year maxT that will result in a modern apocalypse of biblical proportions. We are all going to die!
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• NotParker - Jan 17, 2008
  • Rank: 3.7 / 5 (3)
  We are all going to die ... just not from Global Warming.
  
  However, the cost of beer is going up (farmers switching to canola to use in biofuels), the cost of steak is going up (corn is being turned into biofuels) and the biofuels themselves produce way more GHG's than gasoline.
  
  
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• Huh - Jan 18, 2008
  • Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
  "Certainly the further Jimmy and the lads extrapolate the warmer they can make the world seem but is there any point in pretending we can tell the temperature 1200 Kms from the nearest thermometer? That's the equivalent of taking New York, New York's temperature with a thermometer in Atlanta, Georgia.
  
  Satellite-derived data suggests the world is at or near "average" while HadCRUT3, if their December result is consistent with the year's trend, will come in at about 1 or 2 tenths above the 1961-1990 average. Meanwhile Jim guesses about temperatures 1200 Km from the nearest measurement and comes up with numbers 3-6 times higher.
  
  For this kind of "science" we should re-engineer society? Seriously? "
  
  from JunkScience
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5