2014 is on track to be among the hottest years on record, further evidence -- if any was needed -- suggesting global warming has not abated, the United Nations' weather agency says.
During the first 10 months of this year, global average air temperature was about 0.57 Celsius (1.03 Fahrenheit) over the average temperatures recorded from 1961 to 1990, the World Meteorological Organization says.
Ocean temperatures reached a record in that 10-month period, while temperatures on land were the fourth or fifth highest since record-keeping was initiated in the 19th century, the organization said in a report from its Geneva headquarters.
"The provisional information for 2014 means that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. "There is no standstill in global warming."
The WMO report, based on data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Kingdom's Met Office, was also presented at U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru, where a new international climate deal is being negotiated.
Some climate skeptics has cited a perceived pause in temperature increases since 1998 to support a claim that anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming isn't a cause for concern, an idea rejected by most climate experts.
The long-term trend of warming can contain natural variations that have been cyclical, with periods when warming is lower-than-average followed by periods of rapid warming, says Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University.
"Whether such a period is about to begin we cannot say, but the warm 2014 is a reminder that the warming never stopped and the long term trend is up, up, up," he says.
The observed temperatures cited in the WMO report would be highly unlikely without the influence of human-produced greenhouse gases, a separate UK Met Office study said.
Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 396 parts per million in 2013, 142 percent higher than the levels existing at start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s.
If the temperature trend observed so far this year continues to year's end, previous record years of 1998, 2005 and 2010 could be surpassed, making 2014 officially the hottest year on record, experts say.
The data for the year so far is "consistent with what we expect from a changing climate," the WMO's Jarraud said.
The temperature data adds to the urgency of the issue, says U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, adding you don't need to be a scientists to know there are changes in our climate.
"Every single one of us can just look out the window, open the door and see the effects of climate change," she says. "Because there is not one country that is exempt."
