Warming Up | Green Energy News

February 6, 2005 – Vol.9 No.46

WARMING UP.

2004 was the fourth warmest year since record keeping began in the late 1800’s. By year’s end 2005 could be at the top of the list, if scientists’ predictions are correct.

The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) said that global average temperature in 2004 was 57 degrees F (14 C), about 1.5 degrees warmer than the middle of the last century. Average land and sea surface temperatures were 0.86 degrees Fahrenheit (0.48 C) above the climatological average.

The key word in the prediction is average. (Scientists like the word “mean” better.) The average temperature is taken from thousands of data points around the globe. Some showed small anomalies in temperature, others large.

Parts of Alaska, the Antarctic Peninsula and a region near the Caspian Sea showed temperatures more than 4. 5 degrees F (2.6 C) above normal. A few areas were a little cooler than normal, such as west of Hudson Bay, Canada.

(Main stream media may only report the average global temperature rise, and not regional anomalies which are important. Warmer than normal temperatures in Alaska are causing permafrost to thaw for instance.)

NASA GISS says that 2005 may be warmer than 1998 (the warmest year on record) because of the growing concentration of greenhouse gases as well as a diminishing, but weak, El Nino.

James Hansen - the NASA GISS scientist who brought global warming to the attention of the U.S. Congress in the late 1980’s - said that the Earth is now absorbing more of the Sun’s energy than gets reflected back into space.

Warmer than usual water temperatures in the Atlantic were said to have been a factor in the explosive hurricane season in 2004. The rise of the El Nino late in the season brought the season to an abrupt end.

NASA GISS data shows a dramatic trend in rising global average temperatures since about 1980. Visit NASA GISS http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ .