The October globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.39°F (1.33°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for October in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in October 2011 by 0.31°F (0.17°C).

sn, you are so f******g lazy and stupid it is almost beyond belief. It would be beyond belief if you had not been parading your ignorance like a badge of honor for so long, posting so many always incorrect – incorrect equally often from ignorance and dishonesty.

I didn’t realize NOAA or somebody was tracking the combination of thermometer-at-head-height data and sea surface temperatures over the entire planet back in the 1800s.

Why is it that there’s no data for the Antarctic or Arctic regions?

To take in situ data, you need a measuring station. On land, these are generally located in inhabited areas that aren’t undergoing serious political instability. On the ocean, you get data from ships, but of course these data are only available where ships go. Satellites can help to some extent, but latitude coverage is limited by the tilt of the orbital plane. Some of these pixels might have data from a single station (such as McMurdo in Antarctica, one of the few sites on that continent that is staffed year-round), and I would not be surprised if such pixels are excluded for statistical reasons. Or in some cases the period of record is not long enough for them to have established a baseline for computing the anomaly, or was not continuously operated during the period they use as a baseline.

tl;dr: I think they prefer an “if in doubt, leave it out” stance.