United Nations Ranks 2012 Among Hottest Years Ever: From "Unprecedented" Melting of Arctic Ice and Fears of Global Warming

Of the 160 years since Earth's temperatures were kept, 2012 now ranks among the 10 hottest years ever recorded, U.N. meteorologists said this week.

This year's spike in global temperatures have brought about record-breaking temperatures in Europe and nearly 15,000 daily records across the U.S., the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

And while the debate on global warming has raged for years, the latest report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), one of the most respected weather bureaus on the planet, could be sounding some alarms.

"It confirms the trend towards a warmer planet," Michel Jarraud, head of the World Meteorological Organization at the United Nations, said in Geneva on Wednesday as he delivered a provisional assessment intended to inform policy makers and negotiators attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar.

According to the weather organization, 2012 saw an "unprecedented melt of the Arctic sea ice" and multiple weather and climate extremes that affected many parts of the world.

While La Niña had kept temperatures cool around the globe at the beginning of the year, the time between January to October 2012  marked the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850.

The global land and ocean surface temperature for the period was about 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the corresponding 1961-1990 average of 14.2°C, according to the statement.

The spike in heat around the globe could mean big trouble for the Arctic ice caps, of which Jarraud said the amount had reached a new record low.

"The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth's oceans and biosphere," he said. "Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records."

Meanwhile, nearly 200 countries at the U.N. Climate talks in Doha, Qatari have entered their third day working on a deal that would cut emissions worldwide in an attempt to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) higher than they were in pre-industrial times. 

Temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees C (1.4 degrees F), according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.