WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s National Climate Data Center reported Monday that the January-September period is tied with 1998 for the warmest first nine months on record.
The average temperature for the period was 1.17 degree Fahrenheit (0.65 Celsius) above normal for records going back 131 years, the agency said. For a full year the warmest on record was 2005.
It has been the warmest January-September on record in the Northern Hemisphere and the second warmest in the Southern Hemisphere, the agency noted.
Steadily rising temperatures in recent decades have spawned worries among environmentalists and atmospheric scientists that human-generated pollutants are contributing the a dangerous global warming.
