The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its 2009 State of the Climate report, and found that the past nine years (between 2000 and 2009) have seen the warmest temperatures since the beginning of modern temperature records, and concluded that global warming is undeniable. 

The report included research on 48 countries conducted by more than 300 scientists using 700 weather stations. According to the report, the year's 2000 to 2009 were warmer than the 1990's, and the 1990's were warmer than the 1980's. In addition, each consecutive year from 2000 to 2009 was hotter than the year before.

Since the 1960's, there has been an average surface air temperature rise of 0.6 degrees. While this may seem small, the scientists noticed warming climate effects in the increased sea level and humidity, declining glaciers, snow and sea ice and increased lower atmospheric and land temperatures. Signs of warming has also been found as far as two kilometers down below surface in the oceans, since, according to the report, 90 percent of warming has been absorbed by the Earth's oceans.

"Don't be fooled by anyone telling you that global warming is caused by the urban heat island effect or problems with thermometers - the satellite data don't suffer from these issues," said Neville Nicholls, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. Nicholls also noted that since the satellite record began in 1979, the warming trend has been "identical" for thermometer and satellite data. 

Australia, in particular, was hit by three noteworthy heat waves in 2009. These occurred in the months of January, August and November. January's heat wave claimed hundreds of lives due to the heat and brushfires. August's broke heat records, and November's caused the city of Adelaide to witness eight consecutive days above 35 degrees. 

While warming continues to show its presence, cold spells are still expected to arise occasionally, but not often, according to the report. 

"The mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S. was extremely cold and snowy," the report stated. "At the same time, other regions were unusually warm and the globe as a whole had one of the warmest winters on record."

While this new report from the NOAA represents their firm stand on the side of global warming,not all scientists are pro warming. According to a report from the Canada Free Press, 31,486 Americans with science degrees (9,029 PhD, 7,157 MS, 2,586 MD and DVM and 12,714 BS or equivalent) have "signed on" with the Global Warming Petition Project, which sends the message that "the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity."