The year was one in a string that have been a full degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than temperatures in the late 19th century, the report found.
In this photo taken on November 10, 2018 Flames from the Camp fire burn near a home atop a ridge near Big Bend, California. JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
The year 2018 is likely to have been the fourth warmest year on record, a scientific group pronounced
Thursday -- and joins a quartet of extra-hot years since 2015 that
suggest a leap upward in warmth that the Earth may never return from in
our lifetimes.
The warmest year on record for
the Earth’s land and oceans was 2016 -- by a long shot, thanks to a very
strong El Nino event. That’s followed by 2017, 2015, and now 2018, said
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with Berkeley Earth, which
released the findings.
“2018 is consistent with
the long term warming trend,” Hausfather said. “It’s significantly
warmer than any of the years before 2015. There’s still this big bump up
after 2014, and 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 are all in a class of their
own.”
While expert groups have sometimes divided on such annual temperature
rankings -- and not all assessments are yet in -- Berkeley Earth’s
findings appear unlikely to be disputed.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union body, has also proclaimed 2018 the fourth warmest year on record earlier this month.
And
Kevin Cowtan, a researcher at the University of York who also keeps an
influential temperature dataset, agreed with the ranking, though he
noted by email that he is only able to track data through November of
last year due to the U.S. government shutdown, leaving his assessment
one month short at present.
“Our results to
November clearly put 2018 in 4th place, significantly warmer than 2010
in 5th,” said Cowtan. “The 11 hottest years on record have all occurred
since 2005.”
Amid the government shutdown the
U.S.'s two top keepers of temperature records -- NASA and NOAA -- have
not yet released their findings. Last year, both agencies released their
assessments for 2017′s temperatures, which NASA called the second
warmest and NOAA the third, on January 18
Hausfather said a coordinated release had been
planned for January 17 with his organization and the U.S. government
agencies -- before the shutdown, that is. Once that happened, he said,
Berkeley Earth decided to go ahead and release its own numbers.
NASA
did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NOAA responded
that it would look into the state of the 2018 temperature release.
But Hausfather said that based on where the other temperature datasets currently stand, with data through November and thus only one month remaining to add, it’s likely there will be no disagreement about the rankings this year by any party.
NASA’s
Gavin Schmidt, who heads the office that keeps the temperature record,
had tweeted back in October that 2018 would surely be the 4th warmest
year.
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