05 December 2010

2010 Likely To Be Warmest Year Ever Recorded

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More fuel was added to the climate-change talks in CancĂșn this week with the announcement that 2010 is very likely to be the warmest year yet. On December 2nd Britain's Met Office reported that from January to October the world was 0.55°C warmer than the average between 1961 and 1990, the benchmark. At that rate, it forecasts that 2010 will probably end up being the hottest year since records began in 1850, surpassing the previous high recorded in 1998. Data gathered by the two other main research institutes that monitor global temperatures indicate a similar outcome. A ranking of the hottest years shows minor variation in the data gathered by each institute (the other two reckon 2005 was hotter than 1998, for instance). Each of the last ten years features in the top 11 warmest years recorded in all datasets.
The Economist

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