From Climate Progress

Fast on the heels of the hottest June to October on record, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that last month was the hottest November on record, which should be no surprise to CP readers — see my November 24th post:

If November’s anomaly is the same as the anomaly for the last two months, then November will tie for the hottest November in the temperature record.

In fact, last month’s anomaly slightly exceeded that of September and October, which isn’t a big surprise since, as NOAA reported recently, “El Niño strengthened from October to November 2009.”

It seems increasingly likely that 2009 will be the second hottest on record in NASA’s dataset, which is superior to the Met Office/Hadley/CRU dataset (see “Why are Hadley and CRU withholding vital climate data from the public?” and Hansen essay below).  The figure above, from GISS (here), which updates the temperature of 2009 through November shows 2009 just edging out 2007.   As my 11/24 post also noted:

This year is currently on track to be the 5th warmest year on record, but, in fact, if the monthly temperature anomaly (compared to the 1951 to 1980 average) stays near where it has been for the last two months, then 2009 will surpass 2007 as the second hottest year on record.

Given how warm November was, December merely needs to be of average warmth (for this decade) for 2009 to be the second warmest in the temperature record.

Unlike NOAA, which announced its November global analysis with a major “State of the Climate” monthly update, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  NASA will doubtless wait until January to make its big announcement on where 2009 fits in the historical record.  NOAA uses a somewhat different temperature dataset, so, for it, November was only the fourth warmest on record.

Hansen just posted on his website, The Temperature of Science — a must-read piece about the purloined emails and his experience with temperature data…

The Hansen piece, referred to, is here. [pdf]