Report proclaims 2018 as fourth warmest year on record

A new state of the climate report has confirmed that 2018 was the fourth warmest year in record dating back from the mid-1800s.

It found that the major indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet, while several markers such as sea level and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere once again, broke records set a year before.

The report also indicated that greenhouse gases were highest on record with major concentrations, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, which rose to new record high values in 2018.

Global surface temperature was near-record high from 0.30°C to 0.40°C above 1981 level to 2010 average, while there were also higher and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly the entire 68-year extremes record.

The global yearly average atmospheric CO2 concentration was 407.4 parts per million (ppm), which was 2.4 ppm greater than 2017 level and was the highest in the modern 60-year measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years.

The ‘State of the Climate in 2018’ is the 29th yearly edition in a peer-reviewed series published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The report was led by NOAA National Centres for Environmental Information based on contributions from over 470 scientists from nearly 60 countries around the world and reflects tens of thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.