2005 was warmest year on record.Last year's global average temperature of 14.6[degrees]C (58.3[degrees]F) was the warmest recorded since scientists began compiling records in the late 1800s. The previous record for global warmth was set in the E1 Nino year of 1998, when high sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific pushed up the global average, says James Hansen For the American politician from Idaho, see Jim D. Hansen. For the American politician from Utah, see James V. Hansen. James E. Hansen (born March 29 1941 in Denison, Iowa) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies[1] , director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), at Columbia University in New York City, is a component laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Earth-Sun Exploration Division and a unit of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . This year's record warmth is notable because temperatures didn't get a boost from El Nino, he notes. Hansen and his colleagues announced results of their analyses on Jan. 24. Global average temperatures have risen 0.6 [degrees] C in the past 30 years and 0.8[degrees]C in the past century. Recent warming coincides with rapid growth in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide carbon dioxide, chemical compound, CO2, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that is about one and one-half times as dense as air under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. and is consistent with predictions from climate models based on industrial emissions of those gases, says Hansen. During the past half-century, the largest increases in temperature have occurred in high-latitude regions such as Alaska, Siberia, and the Antarctic Peninsula Antarctic Peninsula, glaciated mountain region of W Antarctica, extending c.1,200 mi (1,930 km) N toward South America; in the south, volcanic peaks rise to c.11,000 ft (3,350 m). Most of its NE coast is fringed by the Larsen ice shelf. . Last year, the average temperature across large swaths of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia was more than 1.5[degrees]C higher than the average recorded for those areas between 1951 and 1980.--S.P. |
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