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NOAA: January was 4th warmest on record

By Pat Brennan, The Orange County Register, Source: MCT News Service

The nation's climate monitoring agency says January's global land and sea-surface temperatures combined were the fourth warmest on record for that month _ much of it the result of the Pacific ocean-warming phenomenon known as El Nino.

"It's due to some combination of long-term warming, the El Nino phenomenon and other factors," said Deke Arndt, climate-monitoring branch chief at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

And Januaries have been getting warmer, too, he said.

"We're working on 30-plus consecutive Januaries that it's been warmer than the 20th century average," Arndt said. This January "fits right in atop of that," he said.

"The last January that was cooler than the 20th century average was in the mid-70s," he said.

Combined land and sea surface temperature was 54.68 degrees in January, 1.08 degrees above the 20th century average.

Global land surface alone was 38.49 degrees, 1.49 degrees above the 20th century average _ the 12th warmest January on record for land surface alone.

And global ocean surface temperatures alone stack up as the second warmest on record for January, behind 1998, at 61.44 degrees _ 0.94 degrees above the 20th century average.

The climate summaries by the agency, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, rely on temperature data gathered since 1880. And while the monthly snapshots offer little insight into temperature trends over decades, the Climatic Data Center also recently delivered its analysis of longer-term trends for both 2009 and the decade from 2000 to 2009.

The verdict: 2009 tied with 2006 as the 5th warmest year on record, and the 2000s were the warmest decade on record.

Before that, he said, 1990-99 had been the warmest decade on record.

"If you take the average in the '90s decade, every single year of the 2000s decade was warmer than that," he said. "When you look at the data, it's important to step back and look at the big picture. It paints a pretty compelling picture."

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	Read more on the National Climate Data Web site: www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

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Originally posted at Green OC (http://greenoc.freedomblogging.com/).

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