Meanwhile, Outside (Global Edition)

Each month around this time the climate scientists at NOAA issue a "State of the Climate" report for the previous month.

In January, however, they do an annual "State of the Climate" for the previous year.

Last year it got warmer outside.  From the report:

The monthly global land and ocean temperatures at the start of 2017 were extremely warm, with the first four months each ranking as the second warmest for their respective months, behind the record year 2016. Of particular note, the global land and ocean temperature for the month of March 2017 was 1.03°C (1.9°F) above the 20th century average—this marked the first time the monthly temperature departure from average surpasses 1.0°C (1.8°F) in the absence of an El Niño episode in the tropical Pacific Ocean. After reaching its peak monthly temperature departure from average in March, temperatures began to slowly decrease in magnitude, ranging between +0.73°C to +0.88°C (+1.31°F to +1.58°F). The remainder months ranked among the four warmest on record, giving way to 2017 becoming the third warmest year in NOAA's 138-year record. The 2017 average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas was 0.84°C (1.51°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), behind the record year 2016 (+0.94°C / +1.69°F) and 2015 (+0.90°C / +1.62°F; second warmest year on record) both influenced by a strong El Niño episode. The year 2017 is also the warmest year without an El Niño present in the tropical Pacific Ocean. [Emphasis added.]

With the El Niño, 2017 was only the third warmest on record.

Yay.

The AP is reporting:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Kingdom’s meteorological office on Thursday announced that 2017 was the third hottest year on record. At the same time, NASA and researchers from a nonprofit in Berkeley, California, called it the second.

The agencies slightly differ because of how much they count an overheating Arctic, where there are gaps in the data.

Speaking of NASA, and the climate science they do - and the damage to that science by the Trump Administration - Space.com reported:

Four NASA Earth science missions will get axed if the Trump administration's 2018 federal budget request makes its way into law.

On the chopping block are the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite; the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) experiment; the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder; and the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

Shortly after the November 2016 election, a Trump advisor said the president intends to eliminate NASA's climate-change research.

Meanwhile it's still getting warmer out there.