Another Globally Warm Year

NOAA's preliminary annual report on the 2007 year in climate is out, and it's been another warm year. Although the year is not quite done, it's pretty certain that 2007 will go down as the fifth warmest worldwide since records have been kept starting in 1880. (All of the top ten warmest years globally have been in the past decade.)

It was the warmest ever for land temperatures across the globe.

It will also be one of the ten warmest years in the U.S., which is in keeping with trends over the past 10-15 years. The ongoing exceptional drought in the Southeastern U.S. was also worthy of mention. It looks like the La Nina that has been contributing to that drought is beginning to weaken, so we hope that cities like Atlanta and Raleigh will be able to recover in 2008.

Below is NOAA's graphic representation of tempeature anomalies in 2007--as you can see, if was particularly warm in the northern hemispere, especially in northern Europe and Asia.