NASA: Last Decade Was Warmest On Record, 2009 Warmest Ever

4:13 pm EST January 21st, 2010 | News | 11 Comments

Smells like science

A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.

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.’

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11 Responses to “NASA: Last Decade Was Warmest On Record, 2009 Warmest Ever”

  1. jr says:
    January 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    “The S in NASA stands for socialism”-Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu

  2. mambochicken23 says:
    January 21, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    But Oliver, everyone knows that the ClimateGate e-mails prove that this is all a big hoax. All the data is forged. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck tell me so.

  3. Wilbur says:
    January 21, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    What do scientists know? I’d rather get my information from an unbiased source like Senator Inhofe.

  4. timmy says:
    January 22, 2010 at 4:02 am

    With all the hot air from global warmatologists, it’d be a miracle if it wasn’t warmer. That one was a freebee for the wingnuts. Send it off to Malkin and get your ass a decoder ring prize and a spot on the commenter waiting list.

  5. Buzz Killington says:
    January 22, 2010 at 9:17 am

    Smells like something, alright.

  6. Joey Doughnuts says:
    January 22, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    Global Warming?????? But it snowed one day in January. Global warming is for socialists.

  7. Frank DiSalle says:
    January 22, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    It is amazing what you find when you pull back the PR spin from public facade of the AGW crowd and they become honest about the global warming canard.

    Read more here

  8. LongHairedWeirdo says:
    January 22, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    Frank… are you *really* that stupid?

    Do you really not understand what that is saying?

    It’s saying we’re not seeing *US TEMPS* changing from climate change. The *world’s* temperature *is* rising, but the US temperatures aren’t, and won’t for a while.

    It’s saying that global climate change is *not* a canard, that it’s happening, but the US isn’t seeing the effects yet.

    Gads… if you took half the energy you used cherry picking quotes, and used it to try to learn to *think*, you could end up looking intelligent.

  9. Rex Mundane says:
    January 22, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    Yeah, and if Global Warming is happening, then how come my air conditioning still works?

  10. timmy says:
    January 22, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    Frank, how come you don’t you debate the consequences of government mandates instead?

    In fact, why is it that most conservatives take practically anything: racism, Obama’s legitimacy, health care insurance trusts, pollution, WMD in Iraq, Schaivo, gun laws, abortion… and deny facts instead of just being consistent and debating the cons of government involvement?

  11. Sean D. Martin says:
    January 22, 2010 at 4:50 pm

    Frank… are you *really* that stupid?

    Oh, oh! Can I answer that one?