In article . com,
says...
Thanks again Gianna and Richard.

I totaly agree that it is what is happening now is the issue and that
observed average temperatures have generally been rising in the last
100 years or so - however, Met Office scientists have said that the
graph "contains assumptions that are not permissible" and "we cannot
make claims as to the 1990s being the warmest decade" - so are they in
that extreme minority who have questioned the graph?

Does anyone have a link which shows the observed average global
temperatures for the last say 30 years up to the present - as the ones
I have seen seem to end at the year 2000. What has happened to global
average temps since the hot one of 1998?

The two most cited global temperature datasets are from the Climate
Research Unit at East Anglia
(http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/), with monthly averages
from 1856 to present, and from NASA/GISS
(http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt), with monthly
averages from 1880 to present. The CRU group uses 1961-1990 as a
baseline period with the average anomaly equal to zero and the GISS
group uses 1951-1980, so that the numbers aren't exactly the same.
Also, they use slightly different methods in the calculations. GISS
runs a little bit warmer.

Below is a table of the global annual mean temperatures from the two
sources from 1961-2005. I've adjusted the GISS values so that the 1961-
1990 mean is zero.

Year CRU GISS
1961 .014 .004
1962 .002 -.047
1963 .034 -.066
1964 -.236 -.348
1965 -.168 -.244
1966 -.083 -.170
1967 -.098 -.115
1968 -.109 -.182
1969 .037 -.090
1970 -.033 -.050
1971 -.190 -.195
1972 -.046 -.146
1973 .086 .084
1974 -.173 -.154
1975 -.127 -.112
1976 -.202 -.305
1977 .058 .067
1978 -.039 -.020
1979 .068 .041
1980 .100 .185
1981 .134 .306
1982 .019 -.001
1983 .222 .247
1984 .031 .051
1985 .012 .030
1986 .096 .090
1987 .255 .250
1988 .239 .320
1989 .164 .183
1990 .308 .390
1991 .251 .347
1992 .116 .051
1993 .179 .095
1994 .233 .219
1995 .373 .370
1996 .227 .295
1997 .411 .309
1998 .580 .619
1999 .340 .360
2000 .291 .326
2001 .423 .480
2002 .475 .596
2003 .477 .580
2004 .458 .497
2005 .485 .655

1998 was a warm year with the El Nino. GISS's analysis has 2005 has the
warmest year on record, CRU has it in second. In the CRU 150 year
record, the warmest year prior to 1983 was 1944 (20th overall). 1992 is
the only year since 1987 that was cooler than 1944.

In the GISS record, 1938 is the warmest year not in the table above
(27th overall).

Both records have 2001-2005 and 1998 as the 6 warmest years, with 1995,
1997, 1999 and 2000 in the top 11.

--
Harold Brooks
hebrooks87 hotmail.com