COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Hearing on The Road from Kyoto-Part 1: Where Are We, Where Are We Going, and How Do We Get There? - "Based on extensive ground-based measurements, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) · our lead national agency for collecting weather statistics – reported that 1997 was the warmest year based on records that date back over a century. While the temperature in any one year cannot prove or disprove anything about global warming, this year's statistics, further confirmed by two other sources of information about global surface temperatures (the Goddard Institute for Space Studies/NASA and the researchers at East Anglia University in the U.K.), follow a clearly emerging pattern. The nine warmest years of the century have occurred in the past 11 years." Q1.1 Please provide a copy of NOAA report and accompanying data/statistics referred to in your statement above. A1.1 Attached is a press release from NOAA discussing the results of an analysis by a team led by Dr. Tom Karl. Also attached are a graph of the annual global temperature index and a figure showing global temperature anomalies for 1997. 50-343 99-17 1997 WARMEST YEAR OF CENTURY, NOAA REPORTS 1997 was the warmest year of this century, based on land and ocean surface temperature data, reports a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N. C. Led by the center's Senior Scientist Tom Karl, the team analyzed temperatures from around the globe during the years 1900 to 1997 and back to 1880 for land areas. For 1997, land and ocean temperatures averaged three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit above normal. (Normal is defined by the mean temperature, 61.7 degrees F, for the 30-years 1961-90.) The 1997 figure exceeds the previous record warm year, 1990, by 0.15 degrees Fahrenheit. The record-breaking warm conditions of 1997 continues the pattern of very warm global temperatures. Nine of the past eleven years have been the warmest on record. "Land temperatures did not break the previous record set in 1990, but 1997 was one of the five warmest years since 1880," said Karl. Including 1997, the top ten warmest years over the land have all occurred since 1981, and the warmest five years all since 1990. Land temperatures for 1997 averaged three-quarters of a degree above normal, falling short of the 1990 record by one-quarter of a degree. Ocean temperatures during 1997 also averaged three-quarters of a degree above normal, which makes it the warmest year on record, exceeding the previous record warm years of 1987 and 1995 by 0.3 of a degree Fahrenheit. With the new data factored in, global temperature warming trends now exceed 1.0 degree Fahrenheit per 100 years, with land temperatures warming at a somewhat faster rate. "It is likely that the sustained trend toward increasingly warmer global temperatures is related to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases," Karl said. Annual Global Temperature Index National Climatic Data Center / NESDIS / NOAA 1997: +0.42 °C (+0.76 °F) The global average temperature of 62.45 degrees Fahrenheit for 1997 was the warmest on record, surpassing the previous record set in 1995 by 0.15 degrees Fahrenheit. The chart reflects variations from the 30-year average (1961 |