Earth Equity News

2009 Warmest Year in Record in Southern Hemisphere. By Eli Kintisch, Science, January 13, 2010. "The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere... Data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator... Southern Hemisphere temperatures can serve as a trailing indicator of global warming, says NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, given that that part of the globe is mostly water, which warms more slowly and with less variability than land. Ruedy says 2009 temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were 0.49°C warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980, with an error of +/- 0.05°C. That makes 2009 the warmest year on record in that hemisphere... [which] might mean that the warmer temperatures also show global, long-term warming as well as the regional trend."