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  • Blogging the science and policy of global warming

    2000’s Were Warmest Decade on Record

    Posted: in Science

    Written By

    Sharyn Stein
    Sharyn Stein

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    The past decade was the warmest on record, according to a new analysis unveiled today at the international climate change summit in Copenhagen.

    The World Meteorological Association held a news conference in Copenhagen to announce a provisional summary of their study.

    They found that the overall global warming trend is continuing and shows no signs of stopping. The data shows our current decade is likely to be the warmest in the past 150 years, and:

    • The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989)

    Among their other findings:

    • 2009 is likely to rank as the fifth warmest year worldwide since we started keeping records in 1850.
    • Large parts of southern Asia and central Africa are likely to have the warmest year on record.
    • Above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents this year.
    • Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average.
    • This year, Arctic sea ice extent during the melt season ranked the third lowest, after the lowest and second-lowest records set in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

    The final figures will be published in March 2010.

    The New York Times has a good article on the subject if you want to read more.

    5 Comments

    1. Gert Roy
      Posted December 9, 2009 at 6:23 am | Permalink

      Hey! I am still confused, is climate change a real problem or not? Someone even set up a site just to answer that, http://www.climateref.com I think it was.

      I tell you the whole thing is surrounded by controversies. But I could be wrong.

    2. HilliGorilla
      Posted December 9, 2009 at 6:33 pm | Permalink

      We NOW have proof of MAN-MADE Global Warming…..Man has fudged the results, so it has been confirmed!!!!

    3. astroknott
      Posted December 9, 2009 at 11:15 pm | Permalink

      You keep quoting all these “studies” and “facts”. Climate gate has shown these “facts” and “studies” to be a pack of lies! And you obliviously march in lockstep down this road to ruin. Do any of you even care about the truth!? Just a little? Or have you all sold your souls to this Global nightmare you call man made climate change? Wake up people! Look at the ruin you are bringing to this planet. You are destroying the lives of millions based on a LIE! Soviet style communism will look like a day on the beach compared to the death and destruction you are bringing to this world.

    4. richardjay
      Posted December 13, 2009 at 12:37 pm | Permalink

      I have confidence that the world’s climate is changing for the worse including global warming. However, the matters raised by the pirated The East Anglican University e-mails have not been explained well by leading media, by appropriate scientific organizations, or environmentalist groups in my opinion. We, the public, immediately need a good reporting of the facts, preferrably with the use of some credible statistics. If scientifc studies have relied on data sets which have been corrupted by omission or unethical modification, what percentage of those studies have been corrupted? How are corrupted studies, if any, distributed in regard to their year of publication? What is the peer reviewed consensus on the percent of uncorrupted data sets that have evidenced trends that run counter to the hypothesis that The Globe is warming? We, the public, need some facts that clearly describe the quality of the data being used to support the hypothesis. It would be my hope that multiple organizations would rise to satisfy this need and if their conclusions are in agreement, then we can get back to concentrating the World’s efforts to solving the problems of climate change and global warming.

    5. RocHed
      Posted January 22, 2010 at 1:41 am | Permalink

      What a bunch of sheep. First you are told Global warming is a bad thing-Longer growing seasons?, Larger growing areas?-how bad is that?
      Now it’s Global Climate Change. I’ve got news for alot of you. The climate is always changing. Always has and always will.
      CO2 is an extremely small part of the atmoshere. Water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas. Why don’t we go after that? The answer is simple-We can’t. We go after CO2 because it’s convenient. It fits right into the Progressives plan. To equalize the economys of the world. I.E. tax the hell out of the US and other prosperous Countries. Why else would the world go along with this idiocy?
      By the way, One of the factors (Constants) in all of the pediction models is Cloud cover which cannot be acurately predicted so all the models are guess work. Garbage in-Garbage out. It’s a scam perpetrated by different people for different reasons. AlGore-Money, UN Power, 3rd world countries-Money from affluent countries. Goldmann Sacks et al- Money from Brokerage Transaction fees. Liberals(Progressives)-Control. And So on and So on.
      If you look and see who don’t believe in it, it’s companies and people who believe in Capitalism, free enterprise, Freedom, Hard work, People and companies that provide jobs for others and those without a progressive agenda. Maybe even gun owners-God forbid
      The world I suspect is warming but you can’t look at such a short time period. Approx 14-10K ybp (years before present) we left an ice age(Wisconsin) and started warming at a faily rapid rate. Geologically speaking. This happened way before man started spewing all that nasty CO2 amd CH4 into the atmosphere. Prove to me that man is the cause of the current “global warming period”, amd not the Sun. Sorry for the rambling like post, but It’s late and I’m tired and i dont feel like redoingit.Ha.
      In other words The Earth is gonna Warm and cool regardless of what man does or doesn’t do and theres nothing we can do about it.