2017 Ranks in 3 Hottest Years on Record

Global temperatures were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th Century average in a year marked by climate-related disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes.

The year 2017 was one of the planet's three warmest years on record—and the warmest without El Niño conditions that give rising global temperatures an extra boost, U.S. and UK government scientists announced on Thursday.

The year was marked by disasters around the globe of the kind expected in a warming climate:  powerful hurricanes tore up the islands of the Caribbean and the Texas and Florida coasts; Europe experienced a heat wave so severe it was nicknamed "Lucifer"; record-breaking wildfires raged across California, Portugal, and Chile; and exceptional rainfall flooded parts of South Asia and the U.S. Midwest and triggered landslides that killed hundreds of people in Africa.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's annual State of the Climate: Global Climate Report has been documenting the warming of the planet and the effects of those rising temperatures.  With the UK's Met Office, it declared 2017 the third-warmest year, after 2016 and 2015.  In a separate analysis, NASA said that 2017 was the second warmest on record, based on a different method of analyzing global temperatures.  The World Meteorological Organization said temperatures in 2015 and 2017 were "virtually indistinguishable."

"The annual change from year to year can bounce up and down," Derek Arndt, head of the monitoring branch at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, said during a conference call, "but the long-term trends are very clear."

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