An analysis of the 130-year record of the Earth's global mean temperature reveals a significant warming trend and a residual consistent with an autocorrelated (''red'') noise process whose predictability decays with a timescale of two years. Thus global temperatures, in isolation, do not indicate oscillations at 95% confidence against a red noise null hypothesis. Weak signals identified in the global series can, however, be traced to significant sea surface temperature oscillations in the equatorial Atlantic (period ~10 years) and the El Ni¿o region of the Pacific (3--5 years). No robust evidence is found in this data for interdecadal oscillations. The 10-year Atlantic oscillation corresponds to a pattern of temperature anomalies which has been associated with interannual variations in West African rainfall and in U.S. hurricane landfall frequency. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994