Last Year Was One Of The Planet’s Warmest On Record; It Was For Ga., Too
The midtown skyline stands in the background in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018. The metro area experienced warm weather with temperatures reaching the high 70’s.
David Goldman / Associated Press
For the planet, last year was one of the warmest ever on record, according to a study published by the American Meteorological Society.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “State of the Climate” report comes out every summer, and this one, released Tuesday, puts 2017 up there with 2014, 2015 and 2016 as the warmest years that scientists have documented.
It was one of the hottest for Georgia, too. Last year tied with 2016 for the state’s warmest on record, according to Pam Knox, an agricultural climatologist at UGA and the interim director of the Georgia Weather Network.
“Most of our warmest years have been in the most recent couple of decades, although 1921 was also a very hot year,” she said.
The report also found that globally, sea level has gone up at a rate of a little more than an inch a decade, which matches the rate of rise on the Georgia coast.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and dozens of other countries contributed to the report, which NPR describes in more depth:
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: highest concentrations ever. Global surface temperature: near-record high. Sea surface temperature: near-record high. Global sea level: highest on record.
The past three years were “substantially warmer than the previous — kind of establishing a new neighborhood in terms of global temperature,” said Deke Arndt, a climatologist at NOAA and the lead editor of the report. “And 2017 reinforced that.”
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