The National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has made available the Climate of 2002 Preliminary Annual Review Web site. Visitors will find numerous charts; graphs; tables; and descriptions of global temperatures, temperature trends, regional temperatures, and global precipitation. A US climate summary, as well as information on significant events,...

Jeff Angell, researcher at the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, has put together this briefing on global temperature readings from a 63-station, globally distributed radiosonde network. According to the report based on this network, during 1958-1999, the global, near-surface air temperature warmed by 0.14 degrees C/decade and the tropospheric 850-300 mb layer warmed by 0.10 degrees C/decade, the...

The National Research Council's Panel on Reconciling Temperature Observations published this report in 2000. The National Academy Press Website offers free online viewing of this important publication, which evaluated the much-publicized discrepancy between surface and atmospheric temperatures in the global change records. The Panel found that "the warming trend in global-mean surface temperature...