NOAA: Second Hottest May On Record Globally, Hottest For Northern Hemisphere

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/14/499800/noaa-second-hottest-may-on-record-globally-hottest-for-northern-hemisphere/

By Joe Romm on Jun 14, 2012

NOAA has released its “State of the Climate Global Analysis” for May 2012. Here are the highlights:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2012 was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). This is the second warmest May since records began in 1880, behind only 2010.
The Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2012 was the all-time warmest May on record, at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above average.
The globally-averaged land surface temperature for May 2012 was the all-time warmest May on record, at 1.21°C (2.18°F) above average.

This warmth is particularly impressive because, as NASA noted earlier in the year, “The cool La Niña phase of the cyclically variable Southern Oscillation of tropical temperatures has been dominant in the past three years” – and that is normally associated with cooler global temperatures.

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Last year, a major study by NOAA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, found that thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100. Then Nature published a study waring that thawing permafrost could cause 2.5 times the warming of deforestation.