The latest issue of the State of the Climate in 2018 was released today by NOAA and the American Meteorological Society. This comprehensive study was authored by 475 scientists from 57 countries and discusses many aspects of last year’s climate. This is the 29th year that global climate summaries have been published by NOAA and the AMS.
The 2018 global average temperature was the fourth warmest on record since 1880, just below the record warm years of 2015-2017. The report does not attempt to attribute trends in any climate variables to particular factors or provide forecasts for the future, just describes what was observed in 2018 in the context of earlier years.
You can see the media slides at https://www.ametsoc.net/sotc2018/SOTC2018MediaSlides.pdf for a quick visual summary. You can download chapters of the report or the full text at https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/.
