2017 was the second hottest year in recorded history

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Yes its getting hotter. From the Washington Post:

The year was the second-hottest in recorded history, NASA said, while scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 2017 was the third-warmest they have ever recorded.

The two government agencies use different methodologies to calculate global temperatures, but by either standard, the 2017 results make the past four years the hottest period in their 138-year archive.

2017 was a year of record breaking disasters affecting the United States, including devastating California wildfires and a trio of hurricanes that cost over $200 billion — events of the sort many experts fear may worsen as the planet warms.

2017 achieved a temperature of 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.84 degrees Celsius), above the average temperature seen in the 20th century, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Before 2017, the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 had set new all-time temperature records in stepwise fashion — culminating in a dramatic new high in 2016 — and NASA and NOAA had both agreed on their rankings as they occurred. 2017, in contrast, merely stayed within the elevated temperature range these prior years had already established.

2017 was unequivocally the warmest year on record that was not substantially influenced by the periodic El Niño phenomenon, which releases added warmth from the Pacific Ocean and was present in the record warm years of 2015 and 2016.

1998, for instance, was at the time a record year for global temperatures, as it coincided with a very strong El Niño — but 2017’s temperature now comfortably surpasses it.

In another striking analysis of 2017’s heat, NOAA’s Arndt pointed out that according to his agency, the amount of heat being stored in the upper layer of the global ocean, between the surface and about 700 meters depth, was at its highest on record last year.

“It’s unlikely we’ll ever see temperatures as cool as we had back before 2014 again,” said Hausfather, who commented on the NASA and NOAA numbers and also released his own group’s temperature record Thursday.

The result come in a big year for global climate diplomacy as countries seek to hew to the Paris climate goals of holding warming below 2 or perhaps 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

 Here’s an interesting visualisation straight from NASA:

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Risk management of this almost out of control warming has to be the primary policy of any responsible government.

Period.