2014 was world's hottest year on record

Climate experts have confirmed last year was globally the hottest on record.

Global temperatures were 0.69C (1.24F) above 20th century averages, making 2014 the warmest year in records dating back to 1880, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

Areas around the world experienced record temperatures, including most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, parts of eastern and western coastal Australia, and the western United States, the experts from NOAA's National Climatic Data Centre said.

The Met Office has already announced that 2014 was the hottest year for the UK in records dating back to 1910, and was also the warmest in the Central England Temperature series, the longest-running temperature record in the world dating back to 1659.

Two separate analyses by US government agencies NOAA and Nasa Goddard institute for Space Studies both showed 2014 was a record warm year.

Global average land and sea temperatures for 2014 "easily" broke the previous record warm years of 2005 and 2010, and last year was also the 38th year in a row when global temperatures were above the long-term average, a report by NOAA said.

Nine of the 10 warmest years since 1880 have all occurred in the 21st century, with 1998 now ranked as the fourth warmest year on record, the experts said.

The experts have attributed the hot year largely to record high global sea surface temperatures, which were 0.57C (1.03F) above the 20th century average. Land surface temperatures were the fourth highest recorded, at 1C above average.

^{NASA GISS Global Temperatures heat map, with respect to 1951-1980}

Six months of 2014 were also record breakers, with a record-warm December finishing off a year which also saw May, June, August, September and October experience new highs.

The new figures confirm expectations announced in early December to coincide with the latest round of UN climate change talks, that 2014 was on track to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, year on record.

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said the new record "completely exposes the myth that global warming has stopped".

"The truth is that the rate of increase in global average surface temperature over the past 15 years has temporarily slowed to about 0.05 centigrade degrees per decade," he said.

"But it is likely that it will pick up again in the future if atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise unabated.

"Measured over the period since 1951, global mean surface temperature has been rising at about 0.12 centigrade degrees per decade."