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This decade 'warmest on record' This decade 'warmest on record'
(31 minutes later)
The first decade of this century is the warmest on record, a report by the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said. The first decade of this century is "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began, say the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Organization.
The agency's data also showed that 2009 was set to be the fifth warmest year. Their analyses also show that 2009 will almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record.
In a separate report, the UK's Met Office said the current decade was "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began. Burgeoning El Nino conditions, adding to man-made greenhouse warming, have pushed 2009 into the "top 10" years.
Its new analysis also showed that 2009 would almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record. The US space agency Nasa suggests that a new global temperature record will be set "in the next one or two years".
The WMO said 2009 was set to be another "top 10" year, with provisional warming of 0.44C (0.79F) above the long-term average of 14.0C (57.2F). World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Met Office scientists have been giving details of the new analysis at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Burgeoning El Nino conditions, adding to man-made greenhouse warming, pushed up this year's global average temperature, it explained. The WMO said global temperatures were 0.44C (0.79F) above the long-term average.
"We've seen above average temperatures in most continents, and only in North America were there conditions that were cooler than average," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud."We've seen above average temperatures in most continents, and only in North America were there conditions that were cooler than average," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud.
"We are in a warming trend - we have no doubt about it.""We are in a warming trend - we have no doubt about it."
The US space agency Nasa suggests that a new global temperature record will be set "in the next 1-2 years". Mr Jarraud emphasised that the final analysis would not be complete until early next year; but the UN agency always issues a summary during the annual climate negotiations in order that delegates have the latest information.
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Met Office scientists have been giving details of the new analysis at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. The WMO uses three temperature sets - one from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and two from the US, maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and the space agency Nasa.
The Met Office has also released data from more than 1,000 weather stations that make up the global land surface temperature records. Asked whether the controversy surrounding e-mails hacked from CRU could have any bearing on the results, Mr Jarraud replied that all three datasets showed the same result.
The decision to make the information, a subset of a record used in assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), available is the latest development in the ClimateGate affair. Vicky Pope from the UK Met Office made the same point: "The datasets are all independent, and they all show warming," she said.
Global warming: A future glimpseGlobal warming: A future glimpse
The row broke out last month when hundreds of messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents. The Met Office figures indicate that the years since 2000 - the "noughties" - were on average about 0.18C (0.32F) warmer than years in the 1990s; and that since the 1970s, each decade has seen an increase of about the same scale.
Critics of the scientific consensus have claimed that the e-mails undermine the case that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing global warming. Although the Met Office has 1998 as the single warmest year, that coincided with strong El Nino conditions - the warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific that releases heat stored in the deep ocean into the atmosphere, raising temperatures globally.
In a statement, the Met Office said: "This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. Now, after a period of La Nina conditions which depressed temperatures in 2008, another El Nino is developing; and it is this, combined with greenhouse warming, that is pushing temperatures upwards again, according to Dr Pope.
"This subset shows that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years and is very similar to the temperature rises shown by the complete dataset. She declined to give a forecast for the next few years - the Met Office is releasing that later during this summit.
"This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain. But Nasa's GISTEMP unit - the division of the agency that maintains the temperature dataset - suggests further warming is coming, with the temperature record for an individual year likely to be set within the next year or two.
"As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records - around 5,000 in total - that make up the full land temperature record. Other researchers, though, believe it more likely that temperatures will remain stable for up to a decade as other natural cycles keep the ocean's surface relatively cool, with rapid warming likely after that.
"We are dependent on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners."
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.ukRichard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk