Climate Change

2007 was Earth's 2nd warmest year

According to NASA, 2007 was tied with 1998 as the second-warmest year in a century.

global climate change

According to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

The article goes on to say:

The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth. Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007.

“As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases,” said James Hansen, director of NASA GIS

The data in the graph above are pretty conclusive. The planet’s climate is changing. Now what are we going to do about it?

8 thoughts on “2007 was Earth's 2nd warmest year”

  2. Hi Tom,
    i have to agree with Robin,
    The usual graph used by the ipcc and others arund the world has been discredited scientifically but is still being used as a scare tactic to tell us that the earth is warmer now than it ever was when in fact it is really localised warming and in particular warming of the northern hemisphere.

    heres a quote from the an article from the US senate commitee for the enviornment.

    “The AP also chose to ignore Gore’s reliance on the now-discredited “hockey stick” by Dr. Michael Mann, which claims that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century, and that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in at least 1000 years. Last week’s National Academy of Sciences report dispelled Mann’s often cited claims by reaffirming the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. See Senator Inhofe’s statement on the broken “Hockey Stick.” (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697 ) ”

    Full Article:
    http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909

    I’d be much happier to support this whole idea of making the http://www.tomrafteryit.net/2007-was-earths-2nd-warmest-year/earth a cleaner place to live if governments where being pro active in reducing pollution ( which may not having anything to do with climate change , but instead quality of life) like incentivising cleaner practices instead of taxing the way we live at the moment , which only affects the poor or less well off.

    Also just a side note. Carbon is not even a major player in terms of greenhouse gases, water vapour is at the top followed by water particles in clouds.

  3. @Robin, I took the title of the post from the title of the NASA report. The article and graph you point to don’t reference any sources. A better referenced article on global warming can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming) and it contains a graph showing CO2 over the last 450,000 years which supports the assertion that CO2 increased levels have risen dramatically in the last 100 years.

    @Robert, the hockey stick graph to hich you refer is NOT the “usual graph used by the ipcc and others”. If you read any of the IPCC reports you would know that they are full of contemporary graphs of up-to-the minute data.

    And while there may have been some controversy surrounding the Hockey Stick graph, subsequent studies have validated its findings and no less scientific bodies than the US National Academy of Sciences and Nature have both come out behind the Hockey Stick graph (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7097/full/4411032a.html).

    I agree that we need to reduce pollution for all kinds of reasons.

  4. I have followed in Finland a similar kind of blog discussion about the climate change and the role of mankind in it. I try to encourage to raise the question ‘What can we do to stop the climate change’ instead of ‘Do we have to react at all’ type of questions.

    The latter ones seem to be more popular. And that is natural for humans. It’s hard to admit mistakes and a lot harder to try to fix the damage done. In minor problems and risks we follow the safety precautions and rules. When the situation is big enough and the risks enormous we tend to lose the sight and start rejecting the evidence. This means that many of us still deny that the ways we affect our environment do not change the climate.

    Neglecting the actions which should be very fast and profound and hiding them by fruitless wrangle about the sufficiency or adequacy of the evidence. We miss the last train, last opportunity to really do something before it’s too late. I hope I’m wrong and those ‘don’t worry, be happy’ activists who are the most eager to tell their opinions are right, at least a bit. I’m interested in all kind of solutions (solar electricity, international cooperation, electric cars, forest planting projects, energy saving politics to mention some). Still having some kind of optimism…

  5. It may be difficult to slow down the warm up (if that makes sense). Car consumption is set to increase over the next several years, and the trend for energy appears to be electric hybrids (Toyota, Ford, and even Lexus seem to be moving their technology in that direction.) But it will take a while to alter the infrastructure to which current consumers are accustomed. It could be the slow down in the economy will be the best thing for us to step back and reconsider consumption, but it will be painful and could lead to some conflict over current resources.

  6. I read that also, but if its true why did we have such a lousy non-existent summer last year here in the UK? But I suppose the winter has been unusually mild so far.

  7. Yes, the earth is getting warmer, just as several times in the earths history, what about the changes after the iceage?? What to do about it – first of all, don’t turn the world into an economical recession because of this threat, that will give us much less possibilities to handle this in the future, and it will certainly hit the poorer countries very hard..

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