Even if December was the coldest for a while in N. America and Europe, 2010 was still the warmest year on record
At times like this, when many people in the US and Europe are still digging themselves out of the snow of one of the coldest Decembers and currently one of the coldest Januarys in quite some time, according to the NOAA, 2010 globally was still the warmest on record since 1880, tying the previous record from 2005.
NOAA has a temperature record that goes back to 1880, and calculates the annual results relative to the average temperature in the 20th century. By this measure, 2010’s global mean surface temperature is 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the previous century’s average. That places it in a tie with 2005 as the warmest year NOAA has recorded. The Northern Hemisphere experienced its warmest year on record, while land areas (which more people are likely to perceive as the temperature) tied with the same year as the second warmest on record. By any measure, it was an unusually hot year, despite the winter chills that struck many areas in December.
This came even as the major driver of short-term variability, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, experienced a mixed year. The equatorial Pacific started the year in its warm, El Niño state, which helped drive up global temperatures. But less than halfway through the year, it began to shift, and by July a cool, La Niña phase had started. This kept global temperatures down, and undoubtedly contributed to the fact that 2010 had to share its record.
We’re now several decades into the current warming trend, and it seems safe to say that elevated temperatures have become the planet’s new normal. Although there were only minor temperature differences among the years of the past decade, all the years were hot. Only 2008 failed to make it to the top-10 list of the warmest years in NOAA’s records, bumped out by 1998, which remains in third place thanks to a strong El Niño. As mentioned above, It has now been 34 years since the last time the planet experienced an annual temperature that was below the 20th century average.
The important thing to remember is that local weather patterns are not the same as overall global climate and temperature. You can joke about shoveling a foot of global warming off your sidewalk this winter, but it looks like that the trend for a while is going to be continued rising temperatures.
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