GISS shows 2010 as record hot for land/ocean - NOAA declares tie with 2005.

The GISS index for December is out, and while at 0.4C the anomaly is much less than November, it was still just enough to beat 2005. I have updated the tracking plot.

The NOAA also say that 2010 tied with 2005 as hottest year, but don't give the actual anomalies. It isn't in their usual data file, so I can't plot it.



Roy Spencer has the UAH Dec figure, down 0.09C on November. But he's using a new adjustment period, so I haven't figured how to update the existing graph. It probably won't be hard, but Ive been waiting for them to update the existing data file. Maybe it's obsolete. Anyway, it would have required a very big increase to reach a record level here.

Update.  GISS describes the result as a "statistical" tie between 2005 and 2010. The NOAA number is posted now, and 2010, if you average monthly means, fell just behind 2005. Very close.

Anomaly °C	GISS	NOAA
2010	0.6325	0.6169
2005	0.6242	0.6183
1998	0.5642	0.5984

From the climate point of view, it really doesn't matter which was hottest. 2010 was just another of the recent warm years.

Update. Zeke has pointed me to a more up-to-date UAH data set. So I've added that to the plot - it didn't make any records. The tracker plot (for UAH) looks different because of the new baseline - in fact it sags over the next plot below. But since this is nearly the last plot for 2010, I didn't move it.