Year 2010 is the warmest on record

Extreme weather conditions, such as the past cold and snowy winter, easily make people say that climate change is nonsense and not really happening. Still, even with the current heat wave (that we at least in Finland are partly enjoying and partly suffering) it would be wrong to assume that any single weather event, whether it is a blizzard or a heat wave, offers evidence of climate change - for this, statistics have to be collected for a long period of time.

According to the recently published NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) report, last month was the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any January-June period for the combined global land and surface temperatures. The NOAA analysis is based on records going back to 1880. The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C while the 20th century average was 15.5°C.

This also backs up NASA's findings. In their report, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies notes that this is all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect”.

Sources:
Climate Progress articles here and here.