2014 was a summer sizzler: Earth's hottest on record

The planet just had its hottest summer on record, according to data released Thursday by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. It's also well on its way to having its hottest year ever, beating 2010, said climate scientist Jake Crouch of the data center.

The global temperature for summer was 1.28 degrees above the 20th-century average of 61.5 degrees.

Records go back to 1880. Climatologists define summer in the Northern Hemisphere as the months of June, July and August.

August temperatures set overall records as well, the climate center reported. The world's oceans were also very warm and had the largest departure from average of any month.

It was the 38th consecutive August (and 354th consecutive month) that saw a global average temperature above historic averages. The last below-average August was in 1976.

For the year to-date, fueled in part by warmth in the oceans, 2014 is the third-warmest year on record. According to Crouch, the only land area on the planet that's been cooler than average this year has been the central and eastern U.S.

In the U.S., the ongoing wild extremes of Western heat and Central and Eastern chill combined to bring a near-average summer temperature nationwide, the climate center reported last week. Overall, it was the coolest summer since 2009.

States along the West Coast had near-record high temperatures in the summer, with above-average temperatures stretching east to the Rockies. California, Oregon and Washington each had a top-5 warm summer,

Meanwhile, below-average summer temperatures were recorded from the Rocky Mountains and through much of the central U.S. and East Coast.

Other data sets released earlier this week also reported that summer was record warm worldwide, according to data from both NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Japan Meteorological Agency.