2010 warmest year on updated HadCRUT records

A longstanding environmental analysis of global weather has been updated to include 2010, rather than 1998, as the warmest year on record by the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit (Cru) at the University of East Anglia.

HadCRUT dates back to 1850 and is one of the main global temperate records. The recent update is an attempt to include more data from the Arctic region, which has been found to have the highest levels of warming. It is one of three global records used extensively by climatologists.

Crut's director, Phil Jones said: "HadCRUT is underpinned by observations and we've previously been clear it may not be fully capturing changes in the Arctic because we have had so little data from the area.

"For the latest version, we have included observations from more than 400 (observation) stations across the Arctic, Russia and Canada."

The additional records are an attempt to get a better representation of global weather conditions around the world. Despite constant revisions to HadCRUT,

the overall warming signal has not changed. According to scientists, it has remained at about 0.75C (1.4F) since 1900.

Posted by Joseph Hutton