Greenhouse gases blamed for making 2005 hottest year to date

LAST year was the warmest the world has experienced since records began more than a century ago, the United States space agency, NASA, revealed last night.

Researchers have calculated that 2005 saw the highest annual average surface temperature worldwide since the late 1800s.

They believe it beats the previous record, set in 1998, when El Niño, a natural phenomenon caused by shifts in prevailing winds and ocean currents that occurs every two to ten years and brings unusually warm seas in the eastern Pacific and cooler waters in the west, boosted global temperatures.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that because no direct data was available in the Arctic, analysts had to estimate temperatures from nearby weather stations.

As a result it was not possible to say with certainty that 2005 had been the hottest year yet, but he added: "I'm reasonably confident it was".

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US says world safer, despite 11,000 attacks in '05

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