Global temperature in 2017 was the warmest of any non-El Niño year in the instrumental record. Since 1901, the planet’s surface has warmed by an average of 0.7–0.9° Celsius (1.3–1.6° Fahrenheit) per century, but the rate of warming has nearly doubled since 1975 to 1.5–1.8° Celsius (2.7–3.2° Fahrenheit) per century.
Impacts of global warming on Great Plains summer rainfall and vegetation are biggest unknowns.
But basin-wide quiet periods favor rapid intensification of U.S. landfalling hurricanes.
About a third of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel burning winds up in the global ocean. Repeat cruises help scientists understand what happens to that carbon below the water surface.
A saildrone observed the growth and decay of a bloom of ocean plants in the Alaskan Arctic in late summer 2017. Such blooms affect the rate of regional ocean acidification, which occurs as surface waters absorb human-produced carbon dioxide.
Most of the United States has better than even odds of June temperatures being in the warmest third of the 1981-2010 climate record.
This animated gif tracks the emergence and decay of La Niña in the tropical Pacific from August 2017-April 2018.
Old ice continues disappearing from the Arctic Ocean, continuing a decades-long pattern.
Models suggest 2016's extreme warmth may be the Arctic's new normal within a decade.
A dry winter set the stage for widespread and severe drought across the Southwest and Southern Plains.