The earth’s average surface temperature in 1998 is the highest by far since people first began to measure it with thermometers in the mid-19th century. According to the new figures, the average global temperature this year will turn out to be about 58 degrees, a full degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average. ”This number’s amazing,” said Dr. Philip D. Jones, a climatologist at the CRU East Anglia, speaking of a field in which records are set in fractions. Dr. Jones provided the information on which the announcement was based. These new figures meant a huge drop in world temperatures previously published by Phil Jones of CRU East Anglia and David Parker of British Met Office. The British readings had shown that the average global temperature in 1988 was 0.612 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average for the period 1950 through 1979, which is a base for comparing global temperatures. The average worldwide temperature for that 30-year period is roughly 59 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mann’s Hockey Stick

After previously posting global temperatures varying around 60 degrees Fahrenheit up to the mid nineties, the four major authorities, NOAA, NASA, Briish Met Office and CRU East Anglia had agreed to lower global temperatures using the publication of the Hockey Stick graph. Tom Karl, chief climate scientist and author of NOAA graph below, tried to make light of the huge difference:

NOAA Graph 1997

Worldwide average temperatures in the 1980s and the 1990s had been the highest on record, and the Earth’s average surface temperature last year of some 62 degrees Fahrenheit 62.45 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 1.76 degrees above the average of 61.7 degrees for 1961-1990”.

Please note: “The estimate for the baseline global temperature used in this study differed, and was warmer than, the baseline estimate (Jones et al, 1999) used currently. This report has been superseded by subsequent analyses. However, as with all climate monitoring reports, it is left on line as it was written at the time”

It should be noted that 71% of the earth’s surface is ocean and the only ocean data prior to the satellite era began in the 1970s was limited to ship routes mainly near land in the northern hemisphere.“Ships travel on well-established routes so that vast areas of ocean, are simply not traversed by ships at all, and even those that do, may not return weather data on route. “According to overseers of the long-term instrumental temperature data, the Southern Hemisphere record is “mostly made up”. This is due to an extremely limited number of available measurements both historically and even presently from Antarctica to the equatorial regions.

In 1981, NASA’s James Hansen et al reported that “Problems in obtaining a global temperature history are due to the uneven station distribution, with the Southern Hemisphere and ocean areas poorly represented,” – – – – (Science, 28 August 1981, Volume 213, Number 4511(link))

In 1978, the New York Times reported there was too little temperature data from the Southern Hemisphere to draw any reliable conclusions. The report, prepared by German, Japanese and American specialists, appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of  Nature, the British journal and stated that “Data from the Southern Hemisphere, particularly south of latitude 30 south, are so meager that reliable conclusions are not possible,” the report says.

The decision to drop world temperatures was made when satellite data became available showing earth temperature at 15 degrees Celsius which meant, in order to show the earth is warming at a frightening rate, the CRU East Anglia reduced the global temperature in 1998 to 58 F giving them more than 20 years to reach 15.23 C, the 1.5 C above the pre-industrial of 13.73 C, when the more catastrophic weather they predicted will occur!