The map shows temperature changes for the last decade--January 2000 to December 2009--relative to the 1951-1980 mean. Warmer areas are in red, cooler areas in blue. The largest temperature increases occurred in the Arctic and a portion of Antarctica. Image: NASA
NASA [1] has just announced that the period from January 2000 through December 2009 has been the hottest decade since record-keeping began in 1880. Furthermore, 2009 was the second-hottest year on record for the planet as a whole and in the southern hemisphere, the hottest. Last year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than the hottest year, 2005.
Focus on Long-Term Trend, Not Just Yearly Records
But don't fixate on yearly data--which year is hottest, or second hottest--says Goddard Institute for Space Studies [2] director Dr. James Hansen [3]. Doing so "usually misses the point." In short, it's the long-term trend not the year-to-year variability that we should be focusing on.
Hansen points out that while there's always interest in that record, "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."
The NASA data shows that surface temperatures over the past 30 years have increase about 0.2°C each decade.
The rest is at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/nasa-2000-2009-hotest-decade-on-record.php [4]