"Current Decade Hottest On Instrumental Record -- UK's Met Office"

"LONDON -- The current decade has been by far the warmest decade on instrumental record, the U.K.'s Meteorological Office said Tuesday as it released new figures at the climate change talks in Copenhagen.

'Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year, the last 10 years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia,' the statement from the U.K.'s National Weather Service said.

Independent analyses made by the U.S. National Climatic Data Center and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies show similar results, the statement said.

'These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise--most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed,' the Met Office said."

Dow Jones News Service had the story December 8, 2009.