Past decade warmest on record, UN weather agency says

The first decade of the new millennium was the warmest on record the United Nations weather monitoring agency has announced. The decade of the 2000s was warmer than the decade of the 1990s which in turn was warmer than the 1980s said Omar Baddour Chief of the Data Management Application Divisions at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).The new findings are part of the WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate an annual survey by the agency about the weather and climate change. The decade between 2000 and 2009 included one of the warmest years on record � last year which was the fifth hottest year since records began.Last year also brought extreme weather ranging from devastating droughts to severe floods extreme heatwaves and cold waves in many parts of the world according to the newly released WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate. The Southern Hemisphere was particularly warmer than the long-term average while the Northern Hemisphere cooled at the end of 2009 with heavy snowfall in Europe North America and northern Asia. The information is based on climate date from a network of data collected from some 10000 land stations 3000 aircraft 1000 upper-air stations and 1000 ships and nearly 70 satellites.