AlQa'dah 30, 1433, Oct 16, 2012, SPA - The world last month matched a record for the hottest September, set in 2005. Last month's average temperature was 15.67 degrees Celsius worldwide, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday. It was the third time since 2000 that the world set or tied a heat record for September. NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt said it may be worth studying why September, more than other months, keeps setting world records. It might be the lengthening of the Northern Hemisphere summer as a result of man-made global warming and continual loss of Arctic sea ice that indirectly helps cool other parts of the world, said University of Victoria (Canada) climate scientist Andrew Weaver. It was the 16th time that the world has set or tied a hot temperature record since 2000, according to NOAA. The last time the world set a cold temperature record was in late 1916, almost 96 years ago. Such record-setting trends are the result of man-made global warming, Weaver said. “What's playing out is precisely what climate said we should expect to see 20 to 30 years ago," he said. September was the 331st consecutive month with global temperatures above the 20th-century average. According to NOAA, all of the top ten warmest years on record have occurred after 1997.
