World’s warming continues

Tying 1998 as the hottest year on record, 2005 continued a warming trend that has increased rapidly in recent decades and offered more evidence that the planet is experiencing a dramatic climate shift.

Four different temperature analyses released Thursday varied by a few hundredths of a degree, but agreed 2005 was either the hottest or second hottest year since record keeping began in the late 1880s. Unlike 1998, however, 2005 had no El Nino, a natural weather phenomenon, to warm ocean waters.

The planet has been slowly warming for a century, and the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990, a trend that a majority of scientists say is in large part attributable to human production of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere.

“The last 10 years have been exceptionally warm, said Raymond Bradley, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. “2005 continues this extraordinary sequence of warm temperatures.”

This year saw above-average temperatures across the planet, with extreme warmth in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, including Alaska, Russia and Scandinavia, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to scientists at NOAA, a preliminary ranking shows 2005 was 1.06 degrees warmer than the long-term average of 57 degrees, and 1998 was 1.12 degrees warmer.