January 12, 2008

Here is an interesting article from the Washington Post.

Data collected from around the globe indicate that 2007 ranks as the second-warmest year on record, according to a new analysis from climatologists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

A second team of scientists, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has come up with slightly different results using the same raw data -- suggesting that last year was the fifth-warmest on record -- but the groups reached the same conclusion on where Earth's climate has been headed for the past quarter-century. Taking into account the new data, they said, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.

Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Goddard, said researchers are not as focused on "any individual year but the long-term trends."

"We've got a sustained warming of the planet, which is unequivocal, and the best we can work out is that it's because we've been increasing the greenhouse gas emissions, primarily," Schmidt said in a telephone interview yesterday. "That means it's going to continue. The long-term trends are up, and they're up in the same way our models have been predicting for the last 20 years."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR200801...