2009 is Australia’s second warmest year ever since 1910.

That’s the finding from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology who say that 2009 will be remembered for extreme bushfires, dust-storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves.

The graph shows temperature change, averaged over 10 years, the grey bars. It’s a consistent picture worldwide – watch the world warm in these NASA animations from 1880 to 2006.