State of the Climate in 2007

The combined land and ocean surface temperature in 2007 fell within the 10 highest on record, while the average land temperature was the warmest since global records began in 1880. In the low to midtroposphere, the annual global mean temperature was among the five warmest since reliable global records began in 1958, but still cooler than the record warmest year of 1998. For the fourth consecutive year, the annual precipitation averaged over global land surfaces was above the long-term mean, although the anomaly was significantly less than in 2006 when the annual value was the eighth wettest since 1901. The globally averaged concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) continued to increase in 2007, having risen to 382.7 ppm at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The average rate of rise of CO2 has been 1.6 ppm yr−1 since 1980; however, since 2000 this has increased to 1.9 ppm yr−1. In addition, both methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations were also higher in 2007. Over the oceans, global ...