USA TODAY International Edition
Temperatures helped fuel USA’s weather disasters
Scientists: 2018 was fourth-warmest year
Earth’s fever shows no signs of stopping.
The global temperature in 2018 was the fourth-hottest on record, scientists announced Wednesday. Only 2016 (warmest), 2015 (second-warmest) and 2017 (third-warmest) were hotter than 2018.
Overall, the past five years have been the five warmest years since records began in the late 1800s, according to a report released Wednesday.
“2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” said NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, director of the agency’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
NASA said global temperatures in 2018 were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from 1951 to 1980.
In the USA, unusual warmth in the West in 2018 contributed to a disastrous wildfire season that killed dozens of people.
In monetary terms, the nation endured its costliest wildfire season on record: $24 billion in damage.
Hurricanes Michael ($25 billion) and Florence ($24 billion) were the other two big weather disasters in 2018.
Almost 250 Americans were killed in the disasters in 2018. The total cost to the nation was $91 billion.
The global warming trend is strongest in the Arctic, which has continued to lose sea ice, NASA said.
Mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contributed to an increase in sea levels.
Increasing temperatures can be a factor in longer fire seasons and some extreme weather, Schmidt said.
“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt – in coastal flooding, heat waves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change,” he said.
The planet has experienced 42 straight years (since 1977) with an above-average global temperature.
The warming closely parallels the increasing amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, released into the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
“This is yet another reminder that our future will not resemble our past,” said Shaun Martin of the World Wildlife Fund.
“Even if we dramatically curb emissions in the coming years, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. We’ve already locked in certain levels of warming which will continue to harm millions of people and nature in the U.S. and worldwide.”
Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: “Eighteen of the 19 warmest years since record keeping began have occurred since 2001.
“That means kids graduating from high school have only known a world of record-breaking temperatures. With global emissions rising for the second year in a row, this disastrous trend shows no signs of changing any time soon.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which prepared the report along with NASA, said the USA endured 14 separate weather disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage.
Eight of those disasters were tornadoes or severe thunderstorms.
From 1980 to 2013, the USA averaged about six separate big weather disasters a year, NOAA said.
Over the most recent five years, that number has jumped to more than 12.
Last year’s weather story was more about rain and snow than heat. Precipitation for the contiguous USA averaged 34.63 inches, which was 4.69 inches above average.
This made it the USA’s third-wettest year on record and the wettest since 1983. Nine states – Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and Massachusetts – slogged through their wettest year on record.
In separate analyses of global temperatures, scientists from the United Kingdom Met Office and the World Meteorological Organization reached the same ranking (fourth-warmest) as NASA and NOAA did.
British meteorologists from the Met Office predicted Wednesday that the next five years will be much hotter than the previous five, potentially even record-breaking.
The annual climate report prepared by scientists from NASA and NOAA was postponed until February because of the federal government shutdown.
“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt – in coastal flooding, heat waves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change.”
Gavin Schmidt, director, NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies