2017 one of three hottest years on record
UNITED STATES: Even without the help of El Nino, 2017 was a topthree scorcher for planet Earth.
Global temperatures last year were the third-highest since scientists began keeping records in 1880, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Measurements from Nasa placed it even higher, coming in second over the last 138 years.
Both agencies said the average global surface temperature in 2017 was only slightly below the record high temperature seen in 2016.
Two years ago, the average temperature across land and ocean surfaces jumped 1 degree C above the 20th century average of 13.8 C, according to NOAA. It remained high last year, coming in at 0.9C above the previous century’s average.
That makes the last three years – 2015, 2016 and 2017 – the hottest ones since 1880. In fact, both analyses agree that five of the hottest years have occurred since 2010.
‘‘The fact that 2017 was so warm in a year without El Nino should make very clear how rapidly Earth’s global temperature is increasing,’’ said Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University who was not involved with the either Nasa’s or NOAA’s report.
Although the Nasa and NOAA data announced yesterday have slight statistical differences, they clearly showed that global warming was continuing its climb, scientists said.
‘‘The annual change from year to year can bounce up and down ... but the long-term trends are very clear, especially since the mid-20th century,’’ said Derek Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Centres for Environmental Information.
The results were buttressed by analyses from Britain’s Met Office and the World Meteorological Organisation, which also ranked 2017 as a top-three year for recorded global temperatures.
Apart from a few cold spots, ‘‘the planet is warming remarkably uniformly’’, said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which uses satellites to monitor Earth’s climate.
Although global temperatures differed across continents, virtually all of them felt the heat. South America experienced its second-warmest year since continental records began in 1910, according to the NOAA data. Asia had its third-warmest, Africa its fourth-warmest and Europe its fifth-warmest year on record. North America and Oceania had their sixth-warmest years on record.
The record-breaking temperatures in 2016 were fuelled slightly by El Nino, a multiyear weather pattern that can result in higher regional temperatures. But 2017 was warm even without that additional help.