2007 ties as 2nd warmest year in a century

NEW YORK, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. government climatologists said 2007 tied 1998 as the Earth's second warmest year in a century.

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York said the greatest warming last year occurred in the Arctic and its neighboring high latitude regions. They said global warming has a larger impact in polar areas, since the loss of snow and ice produce more open waters that can absorb more sunlight and warmth.

The climatologists said the large Arctic warming anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007.

"As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases," said James Hansen, Goddard Institute director.

The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

The 2007 temperature analysis is available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/