https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/2018-fourth-warmest-year-ever-noaa-nasa-reports/?cmpid=org%3Dngp%3A%3Amc%3Dsocial%3A%3Asrc%3Dfacebook%3A%3Acmp%3Deditorial%3A%3Aadd%3Dfb20190206env-yearlywarmingreport%3A%3Arid%3D&fbclid=IwAR3zmlBI4bCNxJgpmomdH1bXdOvL0j8eY8Ff7GPWW6MLttp3L33tn2JkUTo&sf207339377=1
It’s official: 2018 was the fourth warmest year ever recorded, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA say in their annual report, published Wednesday.
Global air temperatures have warmed steadily over past decades, shifting up and down slightly from year to year depending on natural climate oscillations like El Niño, but following a consistent upward path. The last five years—from 2014 to 2018—are the warmest years ever recorded in the 139 years that NOAA has tracked global heat. Land temperatures, they said, were more than two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average.
Global Temperature
+1.8
Difference from 1951-80 average, in degrees Fahrenheit
+1.5
1.5
+1.1
1.0
+0.6
0.5
+0.4
0
-0.3
-0.5
-0.6
-0.9
-1.0
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2018
SOURCE: NASA
“It’s a long-term trip up the elevator of warming,” says Deke Arndt, the chief of the global monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in North Carolina.
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An iceberg melts in the waters off Antarctica. Climate change has accelerated the rate of ice loss across the continent.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
As sea levels rise, salty ocean waters encroach into Florida’s Everglades. Native plants and animals struggle to adapt to the changing conditions.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KEITH LADZINSKI, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
The western U.S. has been locked in a drought for years. The dry, hot weather has increased the intensity and destructiveness of forest fires.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Bunches of oil palm fruit are harvested by hand and then trucked to a mill in mainland Malaysia, where they are processed. Ancient forests around the tropics are being cut down to
… PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
In the high plains of Bolivia, a man surveys the baked remains of what was the country’s second largest lake, Lake Poopó. Drought and management issues have caused the lake to dry up.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MAURICIO LIMA, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Climate change is impacting flora and fauna across the Arctic. Although scientists don't know specifically what killed this individual polar bear, experts warn that many of the bears are having trouble finding food as the sea ice they historically relied on thins and melts earlier.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CRISTINA MITTERMEIER, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Lake Urmia, in Iran, is a critical bird habitat and used to be a popular tourist destination. It is drying up because of climate change and management issues.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
The Scherer power plant in Juliet, Georgia, is the largest coal-fired power plant in the U.S. It burns 34,000 tons of coal daily, pumping over 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBB KENDRICK, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Ice melts on a mountain lake. Lakes around the world are freezing less and less over time, and in a few decades, thousands of lakes around the world may lose their winter ice cover entirely.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ORSOLYA HAARBERG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
The Amazon is losing the equivalent of nearly one million soccer fields of forest cover each year, much of which is cut down to make way for agriculture. When forest is lost, the carbon it sequestered ends up in the atmosphere, accelerating climate change.
PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANS LANTING, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
In Glacier National Park, forests are feeling the effects of early snowmelt and long, dry summers. The stresses on the park's flora are exacterbated by climate change.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KEITH LADZINSKI, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
A warming climate doesn’t simply heat up summers and keep winters from getting as cold as they used to: It can also disrupt weather patterns, making storms stronger and rain events more intense. It can change when and where snow falls or lakes freeze. And it may reprogram the very ways that oceans circulate.
"2018 was an exclamation point on a trend toward more big rain," says Arndt.
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But the ever-increasing heat is also a challenge for humans and living creatures around the world. Heat waves from Europe to Australia roiled the planet this past year, breaking temperature records and fueling devastating wildfires. The European heat waves, scientists discovered, were about five times more likely because of human-induced climate change. The wildfires that wracked the western U.S. were also intensified by climate change, scientists have determined, as heat and drought sucked water out of vegetation, leaving it dry and flammable as kindling.
Rising temperatures also contributed to a growing inventory of weather-related disasters. In 2018, NOAA says, there were 14 weather and climate events that cost the country hundreds of lives and $1 billion dollars or more, for a total of at least 247 deaths and $91 billion in damages. Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which devastated the communities through which they ripped, were the most destructive, with western wildfires following closely behind.
The forecast for coming years points to more of the same. The U.K.’s Met Office predicts that 2019 will likely be even warmer than 2018, at least in part driven by a developing El Niño event, which nearly always bump global temperatures up. But scientists stress that greenhouse gas emissions are the primary factor pushing temperatures higher both in past decades and into the future.
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