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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, 2018 was the fourth-hottest year ever recorded which means that the past five years have been the five warmest years in the modern record.
NOAA and NASA discussed 2018’s global temperature and climate in a reported joint news conference ; both agencies maintain independent data that goes back to 1880 to monitor temperatures around the globe. The announcement was delayed several weeks due to the government shutdown that resulted in many NOAA and NASA employees being furloughed.
If it seems like you’ve heard this before, you have: Eighteen of the hottest 19 years have occurred since 2001.
“2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” according to Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The average global temperature has risen about a little over 1 degree Celsius, since the 1880s.
Temperatures continue to warm fastest in the polar regions, where alarming melting of ice was once again observed in 2018.
Annual sea ice extent in both the Arctic and the Antarctic regions in 2018 was the second smallest on record; both poles came in just behind 2017, which was the record smallest since satellite observations of the region began in 1979.
