Fed agency: 2012 was 10th-warmest year on record worldwide

Average global temperatures in 2012 were the 10th-warmest on record, federal scientists reported Tuesday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s global data arrives a week after its report that 2012 shattered the previous temperature record in the contiguous United States.

Worldwide readings in 2012 didn’t set a new benchmark, but nonetheless continued a warming trend.

“The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This marks the 36th consecutive year (since 1976) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Currently, the warmest year on record is 2010, which was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above average,” NOAA reported in its analysis of records dating back to 1880.

Overall, the 21st century has been consistently warmer than its predecessor.

“Including 2012, all 12 years to date in the 21st century (2001–2012) rank among the 14 warmest in the 133-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century — 1998 — was warmer than 2012,” NOAA reports.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which released its own analysis Tuesday, concluded that 2012 was the 9th-warmest on record.

NASA, in a summary of the findings, said that weather will always cause temperature fluctuations from year to year, but that the continued build-up of greenhouse gases “assures a long-term rise in global temperatures.”

“One more year of numbers isn't in itself significant,” said climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before.”

“The planet is warming. The reason it's warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” he said in a statement accompanying the data.