The South Korean government's weather office on Monday said that 2009 will mark the fifth warmest year on record, indicating the continuing effects of global warming.

The average temperature of six of the largest cities across the country recorded 14.0 degrees Celsius in 2009, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said in a press release.

The figure is the fifth highest since the country first started keeping track of the average temperature of those six cities in 1912, as the annual temperature has continued to rise by 1.7 degrees Celsius on average, the release said.

The highest record was set in 1998 at 14.5 degrees Celsius followed by 14.4 degrees Celsius in 1994, 14.2 degrees Celsius in 2007, and 14.03 degree Celsius in 2004.

The report also said the average temperature in May of this year was the highest since 1973 at 18.2 degrees Celsius.

The KMA's figures were similar to the numbers published in a recent study by the World Meteorological Organization that stated this year's global average temperature from January to October was the fifth-warmest since its first release in 1850 at 14.44 degrees Celsius.

At the Copenhagen climate change summit held earlier this month, the UN Meteorological Organization and Britain's Met Office released figures showing the past decade having been the warmest since 160 years ago and the year 2009 ranking in the top ten warmest years.