2014 among the hottest years on record.

This is an update to my previous post on this topic, which was based largely on January-November data.  The full-year data is rolling out and no matter who is measuring, 2014 was a hot year for the Earth.


UAH came out first, showing that 2014 was the third hottest year in the satellite record for temperatures 1 km above the planet's surface.

Table 1.  Top five hottest years in the UAH satellite record
Rank	Year	Temperature anomaly (ºC)
1	1998	0.42
2	2010	0.40
3	2014	0.28
4	2005	0.26
5	2013	0.24

Now NOAA and GISS surface temperatures have joined the chorus.  For both, 2014 was the hottest year on record, despite ENSO-neutral conditions in 2014.  We're in a position now where our ENSO-neutral years are hotter than the El Niño years of the past 20+ years.

Table 2.  Top five hottest years in the NOAA surface record
Rank	Year	Temperature anomaly (ºC)
1	2014	0.68
2	2010	0.65
3	2005	0.645
4	1998	0.63
5	2003	0.62

 

 

Table 3.  Top five hottest years in the GISS surface record
Rank	Year	Temperature anomaly (ºC)
1	2014	0.68
2	2010	0.66
3	2005	0.65
4	2007	0.62
5	1998	0.61

While my previous post found that 2014 was the third hottest year in the UAH record and hottest year in the NOAA record, it was "only" the second hottest year for GISS based on January-November temperatures. An exceptionally warm December (anomaly of 0.72ºC, the second hottest in the GISS record) was the difference.  For the entire year, the GISS temperature map looks like this:

Note just about the only area in the Northern Hemisphere that was below-average in 2014?  Yep, the good ol' eastern USA, partially explaining all those "the US is cold so there's no global warming" memes floating around the Internet.

I had predicted the annual 2014 temperature for UAH, GISS, NOAA/NCDC, and the Cowtan-Way coverage-corrected HadCRUT4 data set based on the overall 1970-2013 trend (1979-2013 for UAH). I've rounded to two significant digits

Data set	Predicted	Actual
UAH	0.26	0.28
NOAA	0.68	0.68
GISS	0.68	0.68
Cowtan-Way	0.63	?

While rounding may help a bit, the prediction based on the overall trend was quite accurate.  2014 was slightly above the expected temperature for UAH while NOAA and GISS were right at the expected temperature based on their respective trends.  There was nothing anomalous about 2014 setting a new surface temperature record—it was right on the trend.

Last, a very hot year by itself says little about global warming.  However, the fact that 2014 was so warm without an El Niño adds to the existing evidence that the pause does not exist.