Even before our December numbers are in, we can now say that 2018 will be the 6th warmest year in the UAH satellite measurements of global-average lower atmospheric temperatures, at +0.23 deg. C (+0.41 deg. F) above the thirty-year (1981-2010) average.

(Jan. 2, 2019 update confirms this.)

The following plot ranks all of the years from warmest to coolest, with the ten warmest and ten coolest years indicated:

The first (1979) and last (2018) years in the record are indicated in purple.

2018 is also the 40th year of satellite data for monitoring global atmospheric temperatures.

We are currently working on Version 6.1 of the dataset, which will have new diurnal drift corrections. Preliminary results suggest that the resulting linear warming trend over the 40 years (+0.13 C/decade) will not change substantially, and thus will remain considerably cooler than the average rate of warming across the IPCC climate models used for energy policy, CO2 emissions reductions, and the Paris Agreement.