{"id":5716,"date":"2015-02-14T08:54:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T13:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2015-02-14T08:54:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T13:54:45","slug":"was-2014-the-hottest-year-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5716","title":{"rendered":"Was 2014 the hottest year after all?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2015-02-13\/walker-was-2014-the-hottest-year-after-all\/6091110\" target=\"_blank\">Was 2014 the hottest year after all?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"first\"><strong><em>World media rushed to report that &#8220;2014 was the warmest year on record&#8221;, but it seems no one bothered to look at the fine print and the fact scientists can&#8217;t be sure the claim is true, writes Samantha Walker.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Was 2014 really the hottest year on record? The headlines across the world&#8217;s media last month &#8211; including these pieces from the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-30852588\">BBC<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2015\/01\/16\/world\/earth-hottest-year\/\">CNN<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/2014-ranks-as-earths-hottest-year-since-1880-1421427411\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/jan\/16\/2014-hottest-year-on-record-scientists-noaa-nasa\">The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/victoria\/warm-oceans-make-2014-the-hottest-year-on-record-mildura-victorias-hottest-town-20150117-12sbpq.html\">The Age<\/a>\u00a0certainly claimed that it was.<\/p>\n<p>The media chorus last month followed a joint announcement by two US scientific organisations: NASA&#8217;s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and NOAA&#8217;s National Climatic Data Centre. On January 16,\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/press\/2015\/january\/nasa-determines-2014-warmest-year-in-modern-record\/\" target=\"_self\">they released a categorical statement to the press that &#8220;2014 was the warmest year in modern record&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yet 10 days later, the UK&#8217;s Met Office (its national weather service) stated that while 2014 was indeed very warm,\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.metoffice.gov.uk\/news\/release\/archive\/2015\/2014-global-temperature\" target=\"_self\">it wasn&#8217;t actually the single hottest on record<\/a>. So the first question is &#8211; was 2014 the hottest year or not?<\/p>\n<p>A quick bit of critical analysis explains where the confusion lies.<\/p>\n<p>Director of GISS, Gavin Schmidt, and his colleagues\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/~jeh1\/mailings\/2015\/20150116_Temperature2014.pdf\" target=\"_self\">published a paper moderately asserting that 2014 was hotter than the second hottest year<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; 2010 &#8211; by just 0.02\u00b0C. That number is five times less than the 0.1\u00b0C of uncertainty in their measurements. They stated that 2014, 2010 and 2005 were &#8220;in a statistical tie because of several sources of uncertainty, the largest source being incomplete spatial coverage of the data&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was 2014 the hottest year after all? World media rushed to report that &#8220;2014 was the warmest year on record&#8221;, but it seems no one bothered to look at the fine print and the fact scientists can&#8217;t be sure the claim is true, writes Samantha Walker. Was 2014 really the hottest year on record? The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,288,369,512,929,574,1219],"class_list":["post-5716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-extreme-weather","tag-global-warming","tag-media","tag-nasa","tag-noaa","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5717,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions\/5717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}