Last year was among the hottest on record, government scientists said Thursday.
NASA said 2017 was the second warmest ever by global average surface temperature, ranking only behind 2016.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a separate study, reported last year as the third-warmest, following 2016 and 2015.
The two agencies keep independent records of the Earth’s temperature, but traditionally release their findings together.
Their analyses differ because they evaluate the Arctic differently. NASA more heavily incorporates Arctic temperatures in the overall average.
“The planet is warming remarkably uniformly,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters Thursday. “We are in a long-term warming trend, despite the ups and downs that we sometimes get on an annual basis.”
Both agencies determined that 2017 would have been the hottest year if there been an El Nino, a periodic shift in climate patterns that releases warmth from the Pacific Ocean.
The government reports are not the first to document earth’s rising temperatures in recent years.
A major climate change report released in November by U.S. government researchers across 13 federal agencies said that 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 Trump administration’s doubts about climate science and most scientists’ belief that humans are the largest contributor of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
