Feb 14 2007
NASA Says 2006 is Fifth-Warmest Year on Record
I really enjoy looking at NASA’s Earth Observatory Image of the Day. Usually they are photos taken from the International Space Station, on Space Shuttle missions, or from one of the many satellites orbiting the Earth which provide photo-like images of particular areas. However, todays topic is on the global temperature anomaly. NASA GISS has measured that 2006 Fifth-Warmest Year on Record. The image below shows the temperature anomaly for 2006 compared the 1951 to 1980 mean.
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On February 8, 2007, climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that 2006 was the fifth-warmest year in the past century. GISS scientists estimated that the five warmest years on record were, in descending order, 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2006. Other climatology groups ordered the years somewhat differently due to different measuring techniques, especially in areas with sparse measurements, but they also considered these years to be the warmest.
There is very little doubt in the scientific community that the globe is warming. Some may say that the warming is not caused by humans, others may say that the warming is negligible compared to the heat storing capacity of the ocean, but the Earth is warming - at least on land. And since I’m a human and not a dolphin, I care mosly about what happens on land. (Sorry to any dolphins reading this.) Increased temperatures have several effects over continents. Assuming the liquid water content in the atmosphere will be held constant, which is controlled by the temperature over the oceans, and an increase in land temperatures means that the relative humidity will decrease. When the relative humidity decreases, a decrease in rainfall is likely, which will bring more drought. Of course this is just a first order approximation, some areas may experience an increase in rainfall.
One huge problem for coastal cities is the thermal expansion of the ocean. In short, when the Earth warms, the water molecules in the ocean absorb some of the energy which causes them to move faster and thus be further away from each other - in effect, increasing the mean sea level. For a more detailed explaination, read the previous link, which is a copy of a paper that was published in Science. As I described yesterday, global sea rise is a serious issue.
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