MELBOURNE'S temperature has topped 20 degrees for the past 100 days straight, the longest stretch of its type in more than 150 years of measurement.
Yesterday's maximum of 31 degrees continued a run of 20-plus degree days that began on December 9 last year.
It has smashed the record of 78 days with a maximum of more than 20 degrees in the summer of December 2000-01.
The Bureau of Meteorology's head of climate analysis and prediction, David Jones, said forecasts suggested the string of days warmer than 20 degrees could extend for at least another seven days.
He said it was part of a longer warm period across the state extending back to last winter.
''The whole of Australia has been exceptionally warm, and the mean temperature across Victoria over the past nine months has been the warmest on record,'' Dr Jones said.
''It continues this storyline of a planet that continues to warm.''
The British Met Office has predicted that it was more likely than not that 2010 would be the world's hottest year on record due to global warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions and a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean due to El Nino.