WP: 2005 Continues the Warming Trend

2005 Continues the Warming Trend
Year's Temperatures Are Among the Highest on Record, Scientists Announce

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A02

This year has been one of the hottest on record, scientists in the United States and Britain reported yesterday, a finding that puts eight of the past 10 years at the top of the charts in terms of high temperatures.

Three studies released yesterday differ slightly, but they all indicate the Earth is rapidly warming. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has concluded 2005 was the warmest year in recorded history, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Meteorological Office call it the second hottest, after 1998. All three groups agree that 2005 is the hottest year on record for the Northern Hemisphere, at roughly 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the historical average.

Jay Lawrimore, who heads NOAA's Climate Monitoring Branch in its National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., called the new data "one of the indicators that the climate is changing." He added: "It's certainly something the administration is taking seriously."

The three teams used the same set of ocean and land temperature records, but they analyzed the data and compensated for gaps in the climatic record differently. As a result, NASA scientists estimate that 2005 average global land and sea temperatures were 1.04 degrees Fahrenheit above average, just beating out 1998's 1-degree elevation. NOAA researchers, by contrast, say this year's global average is 1.06 degrees Fahrenheit above average, compared with 1.1 degrees in 1998.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501637.html

They're all shopping for houses well above sea level. The rest of us? Onyerownistan.

I hope it stays that way. Snow is great.

so roughly equalling it this year, without an El Nino event, is very worrying.

ever raise the speculation as to how many years it will take for certain areas to become uninsurable bio-disaster zones? And thus bother its readership and especially sponsors and political friends?

Fewer years than it will take for the news to report it.

Over 130 feet per day or nine miles in the last year...Something is happening and I doubt it is just from all the hot air in Washington DC.