Jan. - April was planet's warmest on record

This just in from the National Climatic Data Center:

The April 2010 map of temperature anomalies shows that for the first four months of the year anomalous warm temperatures were present over much of the world, with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across the higher-latitude southern oceans, the northern Pacific Ocean, along the western South American coast, Mongolia, northern China, northern Australia, the south central and southeastern U.S., northern Mexico, and most of Europe and Russia.

"The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January–April period was the warmest January-April period on record. This value is 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average.

"Separately, the worldwide land surface temperature ranked as the third warmest on record, behind 2007 (warmest) and 2002 (second warmest), while the worldwide ocean surface temperature ranked as the second warmest January–April on record—behind 1998."