Scorching temperatures and lack of rain caused severe drought over half the United States this past summer. A series of storms and an active hurricane season brought rain aplenty to the southern and eastern U.S., but about one-third of the country is still drought-stricken.

Still, the average temperature for 2002 for the contiguous United States is expected to be 53.6 degrees F (12 degrees Celsius), about one-half degree cooler than 2001, NOAA said.

"There is a clear trend toward warmer conditions, and it is a very significant trend," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA's national climate data center.

In its winter forecast last week, NOAA meteorologists said El Nino will affect U.S. weather through March or April, bringing a mild winter to the northern half of the country while pounding the South and East with more storms.

El Nino is an abnormal warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc on global weather patterns.

Forecasters said the current El Nino will not be as devastating as in 1997-1998 when nearly 25,000 people died due to weather-related conditions. That El Nino also caused billions of dollars in damages due to drought in Indonesia and floods in Ecuador and Peru.

The average global temperature in 2002 rose nearly 1 degree from last year to 57.8 degrees Fahrenheit (14.3 degrees C), the second-warmest year since the United States started tracking weather data in 1880. The highest temperature on record was 58.0 F (14.4 degrees C) in 1998.

Nine of the 10 warmest years recorded on earth since 1880 have occurred since 1990, NOAA said.

During 2002, scientists saw the greatest surface melt on the Greenland ice sheet in the 24 years that satellites have monitored the formation and a record low in Arctic sea ice in September.

NOAA collects weather data from satellites, ships, ocean buoys and climate stations around the world.

MORE FOREST FIRES

NOAA cautioned on Tuesday that drought in the northern U.S. Rockies would worsen this winter, setting the stage for a repeat of the tinder-like conditions that burned an estimated 7 million acres (2.8 million hectares) of forest land last summer.

"When we say warmer and drier in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, that could be a significant problem next year," said James Laver, director of NOAA's climate prediction center, referring to potential forest fires.

The Bush administration recently proposed removing small trees and brush that help spread wildfires by skirting some environmental rules that slow the removal process. Green groups have challenged the plan, saying logging companies would exploit the relaxed measures to commercially harvest timber under the guise of forest-thinning projects.