Last year tied for the warmest year on record, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Thursday, noting that Arctic sea-ice cover in December was at its lowest ever, according to dpa. "The 2010 data confirm the Earth's significant long-term warming trend," according to WMO chief Michel Jarraud. "The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998." The WMO, a United Nations agency in Geneva, reported that in 2010 global average temperature was 0.53 degrees Celsius above the running mean - largely equal to the warm weather seen in 2005 and 1998, the two other hottest years on record. It was "an exceptionally warm year over much of Africa and southern and western Asia, and in Greenland and Arctic Canada, with many parts of these regions having their hottest years on record," the WMO said in a statement. Arctic sea-ice cover, which is seeing a radical decline due to warming, is considered by scientists to be a moderating force for the global climate. However, on the flip side of warming temperatures in some regions, it was "abnormally cold through large parts of northern and western Europe" and some part of the eastern United States, with winter temperatures far below average. Monthly mean temperatures were as much as 10 degrees below average in some areas of Norway and Sweden. Last year also saw what the WMO termed "a high number of extreme weather events." These included the summer heatwave in Russia and the devastating monsoonal floods in Pakistan. Sri Lanka, Brazil, Australia were also hit hard by floods.
