This last January showed a strong el Nino, leading to the largest monthly global temperature anomaly ever recorded (according to NASA GISS), 0.87 deg.C. This caused researchers at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change Research to announce that 2007 would probably break the record for hottest year ever.
I said at the time that I thought the pronouncement was premature, because sometimes el Nino lasts a good long time (like 1998) but sometimes it’s very brief. The 2007 el Nino turned out to be brief, and it’s very unlikely that 2007 will break the record after all. The good people at the Hadley Centre will end up with egg on their faces. Even so, 2007 will turn out to be one of the hottest on record. Although it’s not yet complete, let’s use NASA GISS analysis to estimate where it will fall on the all-time-hottest-years list. The ten hottest complete years ever recorded, with their average temperature anomalies, are:
