WASHINGTON — Despite a bitter U.S. cold snap, the globe is rushing toward its warmest year on record with last month setting the fifth monthly heat record of year.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that last month was the hottest October on record worldwide. The 58.43 degrees Fahrenheit beat out October 2003.

“It is becoming pretty clear that 2014 will end up as the warmest year on record,” said Deke Arndt, climate monitoring chief for NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

With only two months left in the year, 2014 has now surged ahead as the globe’s warmest year so far, beating 2010 and 1998. So far this year, the world is averaging 58.62 degrees. If the last two months of the year are only average for the 21st century, it will still be the warmest year ever, Arndt said. He said this year’s heat is what scientists expect from man-made global warming. Scientists say the burning of coal, oil and gas traps heats, changing the climate.

This heat is being driven by incredible warmth in the world’s oceans, Arndt said. The six warmest months on record for the world ocean temperatures have been the last six months. Because oceans are big and slow to change that makes it more likely the world will set a yearly temperature record.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said in an e-mail he hopes the new data will put to rest “the silly ongoing claims that global warming has ‘stopped’ or that there is a ‘hiatus’ in global warming.”

The world is approaching the warmest year “in spite of the U.S. being pretty cold,” Arndt said. That’s because the United States is only 2 percent of the world’s area.