[henk4]

Originally Posted by -What-

It is very un-scientific to claim a "global temperture". It doesn't work like that.

It is more accurate to chart the temp change over a specific area, not the world.

I produced it as a reply to your statement that earth's atmospheric temperature is not rising. (Globe=Earth)
And of course if you start by making distinctions between different areas (arbitrary chosen??) you will end up with figures where some may show even a downward trend. However, adding up all those areas will give you the average global figure.

Some scenarios actually indicate that the melting of the North pole will result in a deviation of the Gulf Stream, that now reaches North West Europe and caters for the relatively mild wild winters that we have. When the Gulfstream will not reach us anymore it is expected that average winter temperatures may drop considerably. (caused by "global warmimg")

The Switserland based World Glacier Monitoring Service has just issued a report which states that since they started to observe the situation of 80 different glaciers all over the never was so much ice lost as in 2006. The started their measurements on the mass balance of the glaciers at around 1970. This is a much more difficult way of measuring. Previous methods just looked at the location of the glacier front, but this method takes the overall volume of the glacier into account. The WGMS estimates that at around 1970 most glaciers were in balance and were actually accumulating ice. However since 1970 they have only witnessed reductions. The big losers are found in the Alps, Alaska and Patagonia. On the other hand there are increases in Scandinavia.