U.N. agency: 2014 on track for hottest year

LIMA, Peru (AP) ― With temperature data showing 2014 currently tied for the hottest year on record, the U.N. weather agency on Wednesday rejected claims that global warming has paused.

The World Meteorological Organization said the global average temperature in January-October was 0.57 degree Celsius above average, the same as in record hot year 2010.

The ocean temperature set a new record in the nine-month period, while land temperatures were the fourth or fifth highest since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the WMO said in a report released at U.N. climate talks in Lima and at its headquarters in Geneva.

“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.”

Climate skeptics point to a perceived hiatus in the temperature rise since 1998, an exceptionally hot year, to support their claims that man-made warming is not a big problem. Most climate scientists reject that idea. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University said the long-term warming trend is combined with natural variations that tend to be cyclical, with a period of lower-than-average warming followed by a period of rapid warming.

“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,” Oppenheimer said.

Parts of the planet were cooler than average, including large areas of the U.S., Canada and central Russia. But most of the world experienced temperatures above average, with heat waves in South Africa, Australia and Argentina in January and in large parts of South America in October, according to the WMO assessment, which was based on two global data sets from the U.S. and one from Europe.