Last year was the fourth warmest ever recorded, according to data released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
All of the hottest years have come recently, with 2016 being the warmest and 2015 and 2017 right behind it.
The two agencies keep independent records of the Earth’s temperature but traditionally release their findings together.
The average global temperature during 2018 was 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, NOAA said, marking the 42nd consecutive year with an above-average global temperature.
[Related: NOAA reminds us ‘winter storms don’t prove that global warming isn’t happening’ after Trump tweet]
Nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005, with the last five years being the hottest.
The extreme temperatures are happening as weather events are becoming costlier.
There were 14 weather and climate disasters in the U.S. last year, with direct damages of more than $1 billion and a total estimated cost of $91 billion.
The disasters killed at least 247 people.
Both the number of events and their cumulative cost ranked fourth-highest since records began being kept in 1980.
Topping the list was Hurricane Michael in Florida, which caused $25 billion in damages, followed by wildfires out West, and Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas, which each caused $24 billion in damages.
The findings come after a major climate change report released in 2018 by U.S. government researchers across 13 federal agencies said it is “extremely likely” that human activities are the “dominant cause” of global warming.
That report, known as the National Climate Assessment, found the past 115 years are “the warmest in the history of modern civilization.”
The findings contradict the President Trump’s skepticism that the climate is changing. Trump recently incorrectly claimed that a extremely cold week of weather in the Midwest shows that climate change is not occurring. Weather and climate are different things.
