The global December 2006 to February 2007 land surface temperature was the warmest on record according to NOAA.
But Melbourne’s The Age newspaper was wrong to suggest this means the planet is “hotter than ever”!
There is some dispute as to whether the planet was warmer than it is now during the medieval warm period (from about the 9th to 14th Century when Greenland was colonised by the Vikings). But I think it is generally agreed that the earth was warmer during the last interglacial warm period which was about 125,000 years ago.
Nevertheless, the warm start to this year does not bode well for the two Russian climate change skeptics who have bet US$10,000 that the earth is going to cool soon. But this year (2007) won’t count. Their bet depends on the period 2012 to 2017 being warmer than the period 1998 to 2003.
Map from NOAA via Luke, added as an update to this blog post on 19th March 2007
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.