Oct. temperatures 2d highest on record

NEW YORK - Global temperatures last month were the second-warmest since recordkeeping began, while Arctic sea ice fell to its third-lowest level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The combined land and ocean surface temperature for October was 58.2 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.1 degrees above the 20th-century average, said NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The warmest October since 1880 occurred in 2003.

Changing weather affects "every sector of the economy in the US" including recreation, transportation, agriculture, and energy supply, meteorologist Richard Heim said. Rising temperatures threaten to increase flooding and droughts, put millions of homes at risk, and endanger up to 30 percent of the species, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year.

"It kind of all fits together into the pattern that we've been seeing in the last 30 years in this warming trend," said Heim, a weather specialist at the climate center.

Arctic sea ice extended 3.24 million square miles last month, almost 10 percent below the 1979-2000 average. Sea ice has been declining by an average of 5.4 percent a decade over the past 30 years.

Delegates from more than 190 countries will meet next month in Poznan, Poland, for talks on a global climate-protection deal that negotiators hope to conclude in December 2009.

BLOOMBERG