NOAA has released its annual State of the Climate report for the year 2010, and it goes down in the record books as another hot one, in a statistical tie with 2005 as the warmest year on record. But what’s most striking about this past year’s data is how it fits into the larger trend. The list of the 10 warmest years since NOAA’s records started now features nine years from the last decade, and we haven’t seen a year with temperatures below the 20th century average since 1976.

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.

Read the comments on this post

Read the original, in all its glory, right here:
NOAA: 2010 goes down as a tie for warmest year on record