Posted for Quirin Schiermeier
The year 2008 was likely the coolest year of the current decade, but it was still the tenth warmest year on record since instrumental climate records began in 1850.
The average global sea-surface and land-surface air temperature from December 2007 to November 2008 was 14.3 °C, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced. This is slightly lower than for all previous years of the ‘naughties’, but still some 0.3 °C above the 1961-1990 annual average. The warmest year on record is 1998, with an average global temperature just above 14.5 °C.
Image: Global map of surface temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius for the 2008 meteorological year. Right: Annual-mean global-mean anomalies, except 2008, which is the 11-month (Jan-Nov) mean anomaly / NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
When calculating global average temperatures, climatologists prefer the meteorological year, from December through November, as it is easier to split it into actual seasons than is the calendar year.
The WMO temperature analysis is based on land-based weather stations in 188 countries, complemented by measurements from ships, buoys and satellites. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the UK Met Office, which both contributed their own datasets to the WMO analysis, independently arrive at very similar values.
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