1998 Warmest year 'by a wide margin,' NASA study reports

By Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Copyright 1999 Sacramento Bee January 12, 1999

Last year was the hottest year on record, according to NASA researchers who say the rising temperatures are further evidence that the world is heating up.

"Global surface temperatures in 1998 set a new record by a wide margin," NASA said.

In announcing its findings on the Internet, NASA said Monday the average global temperature last year was 0.34 of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than the previous record, in 1995. "And unlike many recent years, the warmth is beginning to hit home; the United States this year is experiencing its warmest year in the past several decades," NASA said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planned a similar announcement Wednesday at the American Meteorological Society convention in Dallas.

Vice President Al Gore called NASA's findings "yet more evidence that global warming is real" and underscored the need for the $ 1 billion that President Clinton secured for energy research in the federal budget.

"Today's announcement makes the task all the more urgent," Gore said.

Rising temperatures have sparked concern that the Earth's temperature could increase dangerously. That concern led to the controversial agreement reached in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 seeking to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases thought to threaten the climate.

Others scientists, however, contend that the temperature changes could be the result of normal climate fluctuations and say that, at any rate, some warming might do more good than ill.

"The record temperatures were largely the result of a strong El Nino superimposed on a decade in which temperatures continue to reflect a warming that largely took place in the first half of this century," maintained Patrick Michaels, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia, who is among the leading skeptics on climate change.

The NASA findings indicate a mean worldwide temperature of about 58.496 degrees Fahrenheit. in 1998, topping the previous record, set in 1995 of 58.154.

And the warming is being felt here, NASA researcher James Hansen said. The United States this year is experiencing its warmest year in several decades.

Scientists Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Jay Glascoe and Makiko Sato of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies based their findings on data collected from thousands of meteorological stations by NOAA's National Climate Data Center in Asheville, N.C. They also used satellite measurements of ocean temperature to obtain a second measure of global temperature change.

The exact results will probably change slightly as late-reporting station data are included, but late data will not alter the conclusion that 1998 easily set records, the agency said.

The 1998 warmth was associated partly with a strong El Nino, a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean, that was occurring in the first half of the year.

According to NASA, the largest unusual temperature readings in 1998 were in North America in a pattern that commonly occurs in El Nino years. But almost the entire world was warmer than normal in 1998.

Because the Pacific Ocean has cooled, global temperatures in 1999 are expected to be less warm than 1998, the scientists said. But they expect it to remain above the long-term average.

According to researchers, the global warming since the mid-1970s exceeds that of any previous period of equal length since the collection of weather data began about a century ago.

GRAPHIC: Al Gore
He called the findings "yet more evidence that global warming is real."

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