It’s now official, 2005 was the hottest year on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.gov) has just updated global temperatures from 1890 to 2005, and 2005 beat out 1998 by a hair. Global-warming skeptics had dismissed 1998 as due to an unusually strong El Niño, but 2005 was not. Moreover, 2005 was the coolest solar year since 1987.

Above. This is a plot of average annual temperatures based on measurements made at the time starting in 1659. The temperatures from 1975–2005 have been corrected for urban warming. The dark line is a smoothed version of the annual data.

Below. “In February, 2006 NCDC/NOAA transitioned to the use of an improved Global Land and Ocean data set.” These new global temperatures slightly different from those previously posted. They are freely available at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html