British summer one of hottest 10 on record, NASA confirm

It may have been a dreadful summer in Britain but last year was still one of the hottest 10 on record, NASA has confirmed.

2012 was the ninth warmest year on record since 1880 Photo: PA


By Telegraph reporters
4:57PM GMT 16 Jan 2013

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, that monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, has confirmed that 2012 was the ninth warmest year on record since 1880.

The average temperature in 2012 was 14.6C (58.3F). This is 0.6C (1F) above the mid-20th Century baseline. Since 1880 the global average temperature has gone up by about 0.8C (1.4F).

The new figure comes after a furore over recent Met Office global forecasts. New analysis, released on Christmas Eve, showed that the five year forecast, from 2013 to 2017, is slightly less warm than previously calculated.

It was pounced on as showing global warming has “stopped”.

However, although temperatures are forecast to stay around the same for the most recent 20 years up to 2017, this is still higher than average and allows for new record peaks.

The new NASA figures confirm that each decade is getting warmer and recent years have been even hotter.

With the exception of 1998, the nine hottest years on the 132-year-old record have all occurred since 2000, with 2005 and 2010 considered the hottest, according to NASA.

It has also been pointed out that 2012 is the hottest ‘La Nina’ year, when global weather patterns are supposed to keep temperatures lower.

Gavin Schmidt, a GISS climatologist, explained each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.

"One more year of numbers isn't in itself significant," he said. "What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it's warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

Previous figures put out by the Met Office agree that 2012 was the ninth warmest on record.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9806568/British-summer-one-of-hottest-10-on-record-NASA-confirm.html