Courtesy of SOHO/MDI consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
2000-2009 will be warmest decade on record:
[Via CEJournal]
The National Climatic Data Center is reporting today that the Earth system is ignoring Climategate and all those claims that we’re in the midst of dramatic global cooling.
According to the NCDC, when 2009 ends, it will likely be the fifth warmest year on record, based on an estimate using data from January through October. (See chart at right.) And regardless of how this year’s rank actually turns out, NCDC projects that 2000-2009 will be the warmest 10-year period on record, with a surface temperature of 0.96 °F above the 20th century mean.
[More]
This continues the same trend of the last 20 and 30 years. And 2009 was at a time of lower solar irradiance due to the solar cycle. In fact 2006, 2007 and 2008 were all at the end of the cycle and they are in the top 10 years also. In fact 2008 set a record for the lowest amount of solar irradiance in 12 years.
Here is a chart of sunspots from the end of solar cycle 23. We hope that solar cycle 24 starts soon. We have had more sun-spotless days at the end of this cycle than any other one since the first decade of the last century. Today, December 9, is another day without sunspots. Perhaps we are entering another long term minimum of solar irradiance, such as was seen during the Maunder Minimum.
But that will only have a significant effect on current trends if it lasts for several more years. Unfortunately, no one knows when the next cycle will really start.
When we begin the next solar cycle and see an increase in the amount of energy that reaches the Earth, only now with 15 years of more carbon dioxide that back in 1995 when the last cycle started, just how much warmer will the next decade be?
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