2000-2009 will be warmest decade on record

The National Climatic Data Center is reporting today that the Earth system is ignoring Climategate and all those claims that we’re in the midst of dramatic global cooling.

NOAA issued a press release today summarizing the NCDC report, which includes information that had already been made public.

Here’s a summary:

• Global land and ocean annual surface temperatures through October are the fifth warmest on record, at 1.01 degrees F above the long-term average.
• NOAA scientists project 2009 will be one of the 10 warmest years of the global surface temperature record, and likely finish as the fourth, fifth or sixth warmest year on record.
• The 2000 – 2009 decade will be the warmest on record, easily surpassing the 1990s value of 0.65 degree F.
• Ocean surface temperatures (through October) were the sixth warmest on record, at 0.85 degree F above the 20th century average.
• Land surface temperatures through October were the fifth warmest on record, at 1.44 degree F above the 20th century average.
• Arctic sea ice extent reached its third smallest annual minimum on record behind 2007 and 2008. The past five years have produced the lowest sea ice extents on record. (See my post last night about this; it includes comments from Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.)

Three different monitoring groups are all reporting the same trends, as this graph from the World Meteorological Organization shows (also released today):

Is it a coincidence that these reports were released today, as the Copenhagen climate conference picks up steam? I’ll let you decide. Regardless, the Earth does seem to be telling us something.