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Global surface air temperature



 

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The United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification website provides information, news and resources concerning action to protect the world's drylands from further deterioration and degradation.

The Corner House website makes available a series of thought-provoking reports and presentations, published by themselves and by and other organizations, on climate issues.

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About the Cyberlibrary

The Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary is a co-production of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the International Institute for Environment and Development. It is sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Tiempo Climate Newswatch is a weekly on-line magazine with news, features and comment on global warming, climate change, sea-level rise and development issues. The news stories carried by Newswatch are updated weekly. Comment, features, interviews and other sections of the magazine are updated on a weekly to monthly basis.

The Tiempo Climate Portal is a listing of selected websites covering climate and development and related issues.

The Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary is maintained and edited by Mick Kelly and Sarah Granich. The cartoons are created by Lawrence Moore. The site was developed by Mike Salmon and Mick Kelly.

While every effort is made to ensure that information on this site, and on other sites that are referenced here, is accurate, no liability for loss or damage resulting from use of this information can be accepted.

Annual global surface air temperatures as departures from the 1961-90 mean


The global surface air temperature record is the main indicator of the state of the global climate system. It is commonly used in efforts to detect the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate.

The global, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere temperature records can be downloaded from the Climatic Research Unit web site. The data are presented as monthly and annual departures in degrees Celsius from the relevant monthly mean for the period 1961-90.

Discussion

The global surface air temperature record shows that an overall warming of about 0.5°Celsius has occurred since the middle of the 19th century, in keeping with model predictions of the effect of the changing atmospheric composition over that time.

The warming has, however, been variable in strength with two periods of marked warming — during the 1920s and 1930s and in recent decades — punctuating periods when global temperature remained relatively stable.

The records for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere show similar trends.

Accounting for the variations in large-scale surface air temperature is a major focus of climate research.

The global temperature record is based on many millions of observations taken at standard meteorological stations on land and by so-called ships of opportunity in marine areas.

The reliability of the record has been subject to considerable attention. The spatial representativeness of the record is obviously more limited in the earlier years but even during the 19th century it is sufficient to define long-term trends (though perhaps not year-to-year variations).

Data availability

The gridded surface air temperature data set on which the large-scale averages are based can be downloaded. Other data sets are also available.

On the Web

Information sheets on the global temperature record and causes of temperature change are available.

Acknowledgements

The gridded global temperature data set used to produce large-scale temperature averages is maintained by the , University of East Anglia, and the Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom.

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Tiempo Climate Newswatch
Updated: August 29th 2010