Copenhagen climate summit: past decade warmest on record, says Met Office

The past decade has been the warmest on record, according to the data presented by the Met Office at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

Published: 11:15AM GMT 08 Dec 2009

The figures, which indicate that 2009 was the fifith hottest year since the 1850s, prove that the world is getting warmer, according to researchers.
"These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed,” Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice, said.

The global surface temperature record for the last 160 years is maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
However this year their report will come under unprecedented scrutiny because of the continuing scandal surrounding the leaked ‘climategate’ emails.
Global warming sceptics claim that emails stolen from UEA prove that scientists were willing to manipulate climate change data to show an increase in global warming and question the reliability of the latest data.
But the Met Office point out that the results are reflected in independent analyses made by the USA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who also monitor the change in global temperature.
The Met Office has also released the raw data from more than 1,000 weather stations around the globe to the public so that people can see the information the records are based on.
Despite the coldest winter in a decade in 2008/09, global temperatures through the year averaged were 0.8 degrees Farenheit (0.44 C) above the long-term average of 57F (14 C).