World's Hottest May Is Now May 2014 — NOAA
By Terrell Johnson and Jon Erdman
Weather.com
Last month was the hottest May in more than 130 years of recorded weather history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday in its monthly state of the climate report, as May 2014 surpassed the previous record high for the month set in 2010.
The world's combined land and ocean temperature for May was 1.33°F above the 20th century average of 58.6°F, NOAA reported, adding that four of the five warmest Mays have occurred in the past five years.
In the report, NOAA separates out temperature records for the world's land and ocean areas. On land last month, the world saw its fourth-hottest May on record with a global surface temperature 2.03°F above the 20th century average. The oceans saw their hottest May on record, with a temperature 1.06°F above the 20th century average.
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Here's a graph that shows how May 2014 stacks up in relation to all previous Mays going back to 1880. As you can see, the last time the world saw below average temperature for May came in 1976, when Gerald Ford was president and the Concorde made its first commercial flight to the U.S.:
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