Post date: Jan 19, 2018 1:56:20 PM

2017 was among the planet’s hottest years on record, government scientists report

By Chris Mooney THE WASHINGTON POST JANUARY 19, 2018

New data from NASA and the United Nations show 2017 was among the hottest years in recorded history, second only to 2016—as global carbon dioxide levels soared to a new record level and global surface temperatures rose by 2 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. This is Omar Baddour, senior scientist with the World Meteorological Organization.

Omar Baddour: “Today we can announce that 2017 year is equally second warmest, along with 2015. And we can also say that it’s part of the three warmest years on record. The three warmest years on record are, namely, 2015, 2016 and 2017.”

2017’s near-record heat came without El Niño weather patterns that historically drive global temperatures higher—suggesting that human activity has dwarfed natural variability as the largest driver of climate change.

The two government agencies use different methodologies to calculate global temperatures, but by either standard, the 2017 results make the past four years the hottest period in their 138-year archive.

‘‘The planet is warming remarkably uniformly,’’ Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters Thursday.

The renewed evidence of climate change, driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, comes as the Trump administration moves to open new areas for oil drilling and rolls back regulations that sought to reduce global warming, most prominently by moving to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The administration said it would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last year.

This has prompted a counter-reaction — with some states, like California, doubling down on climate policies, such as the state’s cap-and-trade system — but the fact remains that it is far from clear at the moment whether a recent trend of slowly declining US greenhouse gas emissions will continue. In 2018, the US Energy Information Administration has predicted, emissions should actually rise by about 1.7 percent.