Copenhagen summit: temperature rise warning
Updated on 08 December 2009
The last decade has been the hottest on record, with 2009 set to be fifth warmest year ever - the stark message delivered to the Copenhagen summit by the Met Office.
As negotiators attempt to reach an international deal to tackle climate change, the Met Office says its new figures fly in the face of arguments that global warming has stopped, blaming the increase on emissions of greenhouse gases.
The raw data comes from a network of individual stations which have been used by the World Meteorological Organisation to monitor global surface temperatures.
According to the Met Office, the records from the 1,500 sites show that temperatures have risen over the past 150 years.
The publication of the data comes in the wake of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which have fuelled debate about the validity of climate change data. The leak featured strongly in debates at the Copenhagen summit on the opening day.
Science correspondent Julian Rush said: "What the Met Office have done is look back over the last 10 years of global temperature data - data from weather stations all around the world and has come to the conclusion the noughties, the years since 2000, are some 0.4 degrees warmer than the average between 1960 and 1990 which is the baseline average that they use.
"That continues a trend - the 1990s were warmer, the 1980s were slightly warmer too, so they're saying that this is a continuing rising clime in temperature which is due to climate change."
"The Met Office says that their data is based upon observation going back over a hundred years and has nothing to do with the controversial tree-ring data that was at the centre of the emails that were stolen from the University of East Anglia.
"Also today the World Meteorological Organisation has said that 2009 looks like being the fifth warmest year on record, with again a temperature rise of some 0.44 degrees above that long-term average."
Vicky Pope from the Met Office Hadley Centre said: "The climate is changing and man's activities are leading to that change, and that's giving rise to this inexorable rise in temperature.
"We see differences in the rate of rise for difference decades, but overall the temperatures are rising in the average for those decades."
Julian Rush answers your questions
Environment correspondent Julian Rush answers questions sent via Twitter.
@chickensunited (Robin Hinson): Why is the UK so keen on carbon trading then it seems to be a scam for "brokers" to make huge profits?
Some people see it as a scam, some people - Britain included, America, many of the developed countries - see carbon trading as the most efficient way of making changes in climate change, changes in behaviour actually happen.
They argue that using markets which by and large - although the recent financial crisis has raised questions about that - using markets is the most efficient way of bringing down the carbon emissions of industry and companies and people because they respond to market forces quickly.
@adanylkiw (Ann Danylkiw): Any point in UK households being frugal with resources if the pop of USA China are not?
Yes there is. The argument always goes that every little bit helps. The Americans are much, much more profligate with energy than we are and the difference between the US and China is considerable.
The thing to do is look at it on a per capita basis. Five to seven Chinese emit the same as one American and so on a per capita basis each individual action does bring things down. Certainly Britain too is in the higher emitter range, so every Briton needs to bring their emissions down too.
@SoMiraculous (Sophie): should we stop eating meat?
There is a fairly powerful argument that says meat is responsible for considerable climate change, partly because of the methane emissions from the back ends of cows and partly also because the changes in land use.
As meat spreads into the diet of poorer countries, greater land areas are needed to graze the cows and that can result in the destruction of rainforests which again causes the emissions. So there is an argument for cutting out meat, not necessarily reducing it completely - reducing it rather than cutting it out.
