2018 Was the Fourth-Hottest Year on Record

The past five years have been the warmest-ever, NASA and NOAA announce.

Written byShawna Williams

| 1 min read

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Last year was the fourth-hottest globally since record keeping began in 1880, NASA and NOAA announced today (February 6) in a joint news conference. The announcement confirms one made last month by Berkeley Earth, an independent climate research group, The New York Times reports.

“The five warmest years have, in fact, been the last five years,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, tells the Times. “We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future. It’s here. It’s now.”

In addition to continuing a trend toward warmer average global temperatures, 2018 saw multiple changes or natural disasters thought to be linked to climate change, including melting of ice north of Greenland that normally stays frozen year-round; a heat wave in Australia that killed tens of thousands of wild animals; and an unusually devastating fire season in the ...

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Meet the Author

Shawna Williams
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Shawna was an editor at The Scientist from 2017 through 2022. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Colorado College and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, and in the communications offices of several academic research institutions. As news director, Shawna assigned and edited news, opinion, and in-depth feature articles for the website on all aspects of the life sciences. She is based in central Washington State, and is a member of the Northwest Science Writers Association and the National Association of Science Writers.
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