[cogitator]

Why would you think the warming trend would not show up in LT but only in the surface measurements?

I think it will show up, but the "record" is stated in terms of the surface measurements. And there isn't a real tight linkage between the surface and LT measurements. They can diverge.

If there is no El Nino within five years I will call it a tie except if we have a record without El Nino.

No problem. The next five years will be interesting!

[palmer]

The next five years will be interesting!

Subtracting out the rampant fearmongering during each heat wave and cold snap, the last five years were boring as heck.

And there isn't a real tight linkage between the surface and LT measurements. They can diverge

They can but we can simply compare apples to apples:

The satellite record (and this is the warmer of the two satellite records) shows no new spike above 1998. The 2010 El Nino is close though and the running average is a smidge ahead of 1998. All of the evidence supports a continued temperature increase of 0.1C or less per decade.