NASA Study Concludes That No Cooling Evident in Past Decade

A comprehensive analysis of global air and sea temperatures by NASA climatologists shows that the planet has not experienced a cooling trend in the past decade and is continuing to warm at a rate of about .3 degrees F per decade. The NASA scientists, affiliated with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the warming trend has continued despite the sun’s irradiative power being at one of its lowest points in a century. The preliminary study, which NASA scientist James Hansen said will be submitted soon to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, said that only one of the past 10 winters and two of the past 10 summers were cooler than the long-term average in recent decades. And despite a snowy winter in the eastern U.S. and parts of Europe, 2010 is shaping up to be perhaps the hottest year on record, the NASA scientists concluded after looking at EL Nino conditions and other global weather patterns. The NASA analysis refutes a study by well-respected atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon and her colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. That study claimed that the trend in global surface temperatures “has been nearly flat since the 1990s” — a contention the NASA scientists say is refuted by the latest data.