COPENHAGEN -- The decade of 2000 to 2009 appears to be the warmest one in the modern record, the World Meteorological Organization reported in a new analysis yesterday.
The announcement, likely to be viewed as a rejoinder to a renewed challenge from skeptics to the scientific evidence for global warming, came as international negotiators in Denmark sought to devise a global response to climate change.
The period from 2000 through 2009 has been "warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s, and so on," Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the international weather agency, said at a Copenhagen news conference.
The unauthorized release last month of e-mail messages between climate scientists in Britain and the United States has provided new ammunition to global warming skeptics. Some of the messages seemed to suggest that some data be withheld from the public.
Mr. Jarraud said the release of the climate analysis was moved up from year's end to coincide with the international conference on climate change. He said it was simply part of an ever-more-voluminous body of evidence that the world is warming. The data also indicate that 2009 was also the fifth-warmest year on record, he said, but noted that the figures for the year were incomplete.
The international assessment on temperatures from 2000 to 2009 largely meshes with an interim analysis by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which independently estimates global and regional temperature and other weather trends.
Yet it was the gulf between rich and poor nations, not the science of global warming, that dominated the Copenhagen conference talks yesterday, as delegates fretted about various pieces of draft wording for a new climate treaty circulating in the halls. A 13-page document that was said to have been drafted by Denmark, the conference's host country, included language calling for mechanisms opposed by poor countries for delivering aid to them to help deal with the impact of climate change.
The proposal includes more oversight by donor nations than the developing nations want. Danish officials said in a statement that the document was in no way a draft for a new accord, and that many such papers were circulating as parties informally traded ideas.
Another document was said to be framed by Brazil, South Africa, India and China. It made no mention of specific commitments on their part and rejected outside auditing of projects to reduce emissions financed by those countries on their own.
A negotiator for a large bloc of developing countries, meanwhile, challenged rich countries to make far deeper cuts in emissions than they have proposed so far. The negotiator, Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, said President Barack Obama should be willing to spend far more to limit climate dangers in the world's most vulnerable regions. "We have to ask him, when he provided trillions of dollars to save Wall Street, are the children of the world not deserving help to save their lives?" he said.
Mr. Di-Aping spoke on behalf of more than 130 developing countries in the so-called Group of 77, as well as China.
The European Commission, meanwhile, welcomed a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pave the way for imposing federal limits on emissions of carbon dioxide, saying it should give further weight to the negotiations here. The EPA's so-called endangerment finding was "an important signal by the Obama administration that they are serious about tackling climate change and are demonstrating leadership," a European Commission spokesman said.
Political leaders in Copenhagen welcomed the agency's ruling, but were quick to press the Obama administration to do more to sweeten its offer to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Andreas Carlgren, environment minister of Sweden, the country that now holds the European Union's rotating presidency, said in an e-mail message that the EPA ruling "shows that the United States can do more than they have put on the table."
So far, Mr. Obama has proposed a 17 percent cut in emissions by 2020 from 2005 levels and deeper cuts in later years. The White House has also indicated that the United States will contribute to a fund to tackle climate change.
A major reason that hopes have risen in recent weeks is the expectation that Mr. Obama, who plans to attend the conference's final day Dec. 18, will commit the United States to making cuts in greenhouse gases.
The United States declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 pact on curbing greenhouse gases, because of strong opposition in the Senate and from the Bush administration. The refusal to ratify the protocol has left a lingering mistrust of the United States on environmental issues in parts of the world.
The EPA finding is expected to allow Mr. Obama to tell Copenhagen delegates that the United States is moving aggressively to address the problem, even as Congress remains stalled on its legislation to curb global warming.
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