November marked 333 straight warmer than "normal" months worldwide Posted at 11:34 AM ET, 12/18/2012 Temperature difference from average in November around the globe. Blue shades are cooler than average, red shades warmer. Via NOAA: ...."most areas of the world experienced higher-than-average monthly temperatures, including far eastern Russia, Australia, the central and western United States, northern Africa, and most of Europe and western Asia. Meanwhile, central Asia, Alaska, much of western and central Canada, and the eastern United States were most notably cooler than average. November 2012 is the latest in a seemingly endless streak of warmer than average months around the globe. We are one third of the way to 1,000 straight warm months. The November temperature was 1.21 degrees above the 20th century average, the 5th warmest since records began in 1880. Here are some other interesting stats from NOAA's latest State of the Climate report released Wednesday: 10 of the warmest Novembers have occurred in the past 12 years the 10 coolest Novembers on record all occurred prior to 1920 November 2012 marks the 36th consecutive warmer than average November The September-November period ranked second warmest on record. Climate Central's Andrew Freedman notes the last cooler than average month globally occurred in February, 1985 (almost 28 years ago), "the year the hit film "Back to the Future" [the original, not the sequels] first hit theaters." "To put it another way, if you are under the age of 27, you have never experienced a month in which global average surface temperatures came in below the 20th century average," Freedman writes. Other temperature datasets NASA data indicate November was 2nd warmest on record, bested only by 2010 (hat tip: Dan Satterfield). Wunderground's Jeff Masters indicates independent datasets of satellite-derived global tempertaures indicate November temperatures in the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were "11th or 3rd warmest in the 34-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), respectively." Year to date Through November, this year ranks 8th warmest on record. "The 2012 year-to-date temperature departure from average has increased each month since February," writes NOAA. The January-November departure stands at +1.06 degrees F. The year is likely to end around the 8th warmest on record, and the warmest La Nina year on record, surpassing 2011. A leaked draft of the fifth assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says: "It is extremely likely* that human activities have caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature since the 1950s." "extremely likely" denotes a 95-percent likelihood