Scientists say this has been the warmest decade ever on record

By Katie Machol Simon on Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm

According to this article from the Associated Press:

"The decade's final three summers melted Arctic sea ice more than ever before in modern times. Greenland's gargantuan ice cap was pouring 3 percent more meltwater into the sea each year. Every summer's thaw reached deeper into the Arctic permafrost, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a global-warming gas. Less ice meant less sunlight reflected, more heat absorbed by the Earth. More methane escaping the tundra meant more warming, more thawing, more methane released."

The International Polar Year's research found late in the decade that Antarctica, too, was warming, causing floating ice shelves on its coast to weaken, some even breaking away. This caused the glaciers behind them to push ice faster into the rising oceans.

On six other continents, though, the glaciers retreated during this past decade, shrinking future water sources for countless millions of Indians, Chinese, and South Americans. This also caused the great lakes of Africa to shrink due to higher temperatures, evaporation and drought. Across the temperate zones, flowers bloomed earlier and lakes froze later.

Do we still have time to change our carbon-loving, fossil fuel burning ways to mend the planet? Or are we doomed anyway?

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For the naysayers of global warming, I give you this: The 2000s were the warmest decade ever on global temperature charts, scientists are reporting. I think we can all vouch for that having felt it firsthand, especially these past year.

The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen. He also went on to say that 2009 appears to be the fifth warmest year on record.

NASA reports global temperatures averaging 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees F) from 2000-2009, higher than the 1951-1980 average, and that temperatures in the far north rose faster than any other place on Earth.