2010 ties record for warmest year yet

El Niño heated things up even as global temperatures continue to rise:

2010 has tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record, according to two new studies

On January 12 NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their independent analyses of global surface temperature data for last year. Both found that 2010 was ever-so-slightly warmer than 2005. But the difference was not statistically large enough to declare 2010 the winner.

The warmth of 2010 is “not surprising, considering that global surface temperatures have been climbing,” says Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data centre in Asheville, NC. The last decade has been the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880.

Combined land and ocean surface temperatures across the globe in 2010 were 0.620 Celsius higher than the 20th Century average, the NOAA analysis reports. In the continuous United States, temperatures were 0.60 degrees above normal,making it the 23rd warmest year on record for the country. The Northern Hemisphere experienced its warmest year on record, while the Southern Hemisphere saw its sixth warmest.

The NASA analysis, produced by its Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, uses the period from 1951 to 1980 as its baseline and found that, on a global scale, 2010 was about 0.740 degrees Celsius warmer than that average.

Combined land and ocean surface temperatures across the globe in 2010 were 0.620 Celsius higher than the 20th Century average

Science News