The sweltering heat baking the eastern United States is part of a global trend. Last month was the warmest June on record, and so far, 2010 is the warmest year ever recorded, according to data released yesterday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
The data represent an average of surface temperature measurements over both land and oceans worldwide.
These findings and those of other agencies that track global temperatures paint the same picture, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"The point of the matter is that global warming has not stopped," he said.
Average temperatures for 2010 to date were 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th-century average, NOAA reported.
"The interesting thing about it is the temperature anomaly map for June shows it was pretty much warm everywhere over land except for a few places," said David Easterling, of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the data. "That's somewhat of an uncommon pattern to see almost all the land mass being that warm."
Only the U.S. Pacific Northwest, northern Europe and southern China were cooler than average, according to NOAA.