January 2010: extremes and monthly summary The globe recorded
its fourth warmest January since record keeping began in 1880,
according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated January 2010 as the
2nd warmest January on record, behind January 2007. January 2010
global ocean temperatures were the 2nd warmest on record, next
to 1998. Land temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were the
warmest on record, but in the Northern Hemisphere, they were the
18th warmest. The relatively cool Northern Hemisphere land
temperatures may have been due to the well-above average amount
of snow on the ground--January 2010 snow cover in the Northern
Hemisphere was the 6th highest in the past 44 years. Global
satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the
atmosphere were the warmest on record in January, according to
both the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) and RSS data
sets. This was the second time in the past three months that the
UAH data set has shown a reco