Two separate sources of temperature data – the National Climatic Data Center and NASA – report that, through April, 2010 is the warmest year ever recorded.

The climate center (NCDC) reports that the Earth's combined land and ocean average surface temperature from January-April was 56 degrees, which is 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average.

El Nino -- a periodic natural warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean -- is partly to blame for the unusual warmth.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies also reports that 2010, so far, is the warmest out of 131 years. Both NCDC and NASA use data that goes back to 1880.

Last month, NASA issued a report that predicted 2010 would likely end up as the warmest year on record, due to the combintation of global warming and El Nino. The report states that "a new record global temperature, for the period with instrumental measurements, should be set within the next few months as the effects of the recent and current moderate El Nino continue."

In the USA, the weather so far this year has been very odd, with the three northern New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) having their warmest year on record, while Florida shivers through its coldest year ever.

April itself was also unusually warm, as the Earth had its warmest April on record.

The climate center says that warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe in April, with the most prominent warmth in Canada, Alaska, the eastern United States, Australia, South Asia, northern Africa and northern Russia. Cooler-than-normal places included Mongolia, Argentina, far eastern Russia, the western contiguous United States and most of China.

NCDC also reports that the North American snow cover extent for the month was the smallest on record for April. It was also the largest negative anomaly, meaning difference below the long-term average, on record for any month.

By Doyle Rice