A Supposedly "Colder" 2017 Turned Out To Be Globally Near Record Hot

Both NOAA and NASA made it official today.

Red planet? Global temperature map shows for 2017
almost the entire planet was warm. (pink and red depicts
warm. Blue is cool, grey is no data.)

Depending upon how you measure it, the year 2017 was either the second or third hottest year on record for Planet Earth.

I wouldn't quibble too much on whether it was actually second or third hottest. The difference in measurement comes out to a tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of a degree, and the data from both agencies is in strong agreement.

Both NASA and NOAA agree that Earth's five warmest years have all taken place since 2010. That's pretty damn recent history.

According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, 2017 ended up being the third hottest on record, behind 2016 and 2015.

What's most notable about the 2017 data is there was no El Nino last year. El Ninos tend to warm up the Earth's atmosphere. The combination of El Nino and human-caused global warming were the two biggest drivers making 2015 and 2016 the hottest.

The inference to this is that 2017 should have cooled down more than it did.

By the way, if you are under 41 years old, you've never seen a year globally that was at least a tiny bit cooler than the the 20th century average. Starting in 1978, each year has been warmer than normal.

Despite the chill in our tiny little corner of the globe here in the Northeast U.S. December, 2017 on a global basis was the fourth warmest on record, says NOAA.

There's still a La Nina going on, which tends to cool the Earth's atmosphere on the whole a little bit. So we'll see if 2018 continues a subtle global "cooling" trend, such as it is, or not.