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Warmest decade on record

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The Met Office released a report today showing that the first decade of this century has been, by far, the warmest decade on the instrumental record.

New figures released today in Copenhagen show that - despite 1998 being the warmest individual year - the last 10 years have been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature, maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Similar results are revealed in the independent analyses made by the United States National Climatic Data Center and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise, which the Met Office stated is mostly due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Separately, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has today revealed that 2009 looks set to become another top-10 warm year according to latest figures, with a provisional warming of 0.44°C above the long-term average of 14°C.

The WMO also reported that 2009 has been warmer than 2008, owing to the emergence of El Niño conditions in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

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