Excerpts from an article by James Gerstenzan January 9, 1998 12 AM PT Times Staff writer Washington- 1997 Ranks as Warmest Year of the Century: According to the National Climatic Data Center’s 1997 figures, the mean temperature of the Earth’s surface, based on readings on land and at sea around the globe, was 62.45 degrees Fahrenheit, an increase of three-quarters of a degree over the mean temperature during the previous three decades.

In 1990 and 1995, the reading was 62.30 degrees, the highest recorded this century, before last year. On land, the 1997 figure was 58.06, down from the 58.29 figure in 1995 and the modern record of 58.31 in 1990; at sea, the 1997 figure was 64.25, the highest yet recorded.

While the yearly variations may appear minuscule, climatologists consider them significant because an increase of barely two degrees could introduce such feared results of global warming as flood-inducing higher sea levels and drought-producing shifts in weather patterns.

Indeed, during the most recent Ice Age about 18,000 years ago, scientists have calculated that the Earth’s temperature was perhaps no more than 10 degrees cooler than now.

Karl and other climatologists, such as Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, acknowledge that one year does not make a trend.This is why the facts that the last decade produced the warmest five years of the century, and that the warmest 10 years over land have all occurred since 1981, give them pause.

While the administration was making the new data public, Vice President Al Gore, in a satellite-fed speech from Washington to the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, announced that 11 electronics companies will produce reduced-energy televisions and VCRs.

Gore said that by reducing energy demands, the newly designed products will lessen carbon dioxide emissions by 5 million tons a year–equivalent, he said, to “eliminating the pollution from more than 1 million cars.”

Record warm intensified in early 1998

UPI WASHINGTON, June 8, June 08, 1998 — After the past several years of record warm temperatures worldwide, the first several months of 1998 brought some of the warmest U.S. temperatures ever on record, the federal government announced. The data was collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and announced by Vice President Al Gore, who said some of this year’s warming could be attributed to the cyclical El Nino patterns. But, Gore said, the overall trend found by NOAA ‘is a reminder once again that global warming is real, and that unless we act, we can expect more extreme weather in the years ahead.’ He cited such events as record levels of precipitation, record deaths from tornadoes, damage to coral reefs from the Florida Keys to Australia, and wildfires in Malaysia, Brazil and Mexico. Gore announced the NOAA findings as a means of increasing pressure on Congress to approve President Clinton’s budget request for $6.3 billion over five years for tax and research incentives to promote more energy- efficient products and technologies. Gore insisted U.S. industry had the expertise and ability to make affordable changes to combat global warming, saying, ‘We can do that. We know how to do that.’ Worldwide average temperatures in the 1980s and the 1990s have been the highest on record, and the Earth’s average surface temperature last year of some 62 degrees Fahrenheit represented the highest level ever recorded. Federal researchers said new temperature records were set in five states in the first five months of 1998, with the average global surface temperature running 1.76 degrees above the average of 61.7 degrees for the benchmark period 1961-1990.