This week, NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held a joint press briefing to release their findings on the state of the climate for 2018.
During the report, they revealed the mean temperature for 2018 was nearly 1.5°F warmer than the 30-year average, making last year the fourth warmest year on Earth.
For the United States, the country had their 14th warmest year over the last 125.
Derek Arndt, the chief branch manager for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, says 2018 “was about a degree and a half Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average, and it was the 22nd consecutive year above that 20th century average.”
Last year was also the 3rd wettest year across America with nine states having their wettest years on record.
With all these strong storm systems affecting the U.S., the country had 14-billion-dollar disasters, costing in total about $91 billion in damages.
According to Arndt, “We had twice the number of billion-dollar disasters this year than we had in an average year over the last 40 years.”
Looking ahead to 2019, scientists predict temperatures to be even hotter as we switch to the warmer El Niño pattern.