Global Warming

2017 Continues Global Warming Trend - NASA

The numbers are in, and NASA has found that 2017 did not set a record for the warmest year on record, but that is far from good news. Instead, it was the second warmest, right after current record holder 2016, an indication that global temperatures are showing no signs of getting better and in fact are almost certainly going to continue to get worse.

The average temperature of the Earth in 2017 was 1.62 degrees warmer than the mean temperature between 1951 and 1990, based on research by scientists at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is located in New York. The past year was the second warmest since 1880, when we began taking global estimates, despite the fact that there were colder than average temperatures reported in some parts of the globe that climate change skeptics used to discredit the issue of global warming.

Warming was the worst in the Arctic regions, where humans do not live, and that has resulted in a tremendous loss of sea ice in 2017. NASA used measurements from more than 6,000 weather stations and ship observations across the globe. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration found that 2017 was the third warmest on record in their own independent estimation.