At least 1/3 of Americans don't believe in Global Warming, or that man is causing Global Warming. Meanwhile the 2000s were the warmest decade since they started keeping track thoroughly in the 1880s. 2009 was the second warmest year in the modern record (2005 was the warmest). This during a solar minimum, though sun output variability correlates poorly with Earths mean global temperature (the variations are too small).
Global warming is accelerating and nothing is being done to slow it down. Nothing will be done anytime soon either, so get used to the warming. We should continue to see increased deviation from global mean temperatures in the coming decade.
NASA has released the following story:
2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new
NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis,
conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York
City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest
year since modern records began in 1880.
Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade -- due to strong
cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean -- 2009 saw a return to
near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a
degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a
cluster of other years -- 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 -- as the
second warmest year since record keeping began.
"There's always an interest in the annual temperature numbers and on a
given year's ranking, but usually that misses the point," said James
Hansen, the director of GISS. "There's substantial year-to-year
variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Niño-La
Niña cycle. But when we average temperature over five or ten years to
minimize that variability, we find that global warming is continuing
unabated."
January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record.
Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record
shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. Since 1880,
the year that modern scientific instrumentation became available to
monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present,
though there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.
The near-record temperatures of 2009 occurred despite an unseasonably
cool December in much of North America. High air pressures in the
Arctic decreased the east-west flow of the jet stream, while also
increasing its tendency to blow from north to south and draw cold air
southward from the Arctic. This resulted in an unusual effect that
caused frigid air from the Arctic to rush into North America and warmer
mid-latitude air to shift toward the north.
"Of course, the contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the
world area, so the U.S. temperature does not affect the global
temperature much,' said Hansen.
In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880.
The article continues here
NASA: 2009 Second Warmest Year on Record
Re: NASA: 2009 Second Warmest Year on Record
