2017 Was the second hottest year on record

Last year was the second hottest year on record worldwide, behind a sweltering 2016, with signs of climate change ranging from wildfires to a thaw of Arctic ice, a European Union climate monitoring centre has said.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, the first major international weather agency to report on conditions in 2017, said temperatures averaged 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.46 Fahrenheit) at the Earth's surface - 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial times.

Last year was slightly "cooler than the warmest year on record, 2016, and warmer than the previous second warmest year, 2015", it said. Temperature records date back to the late 19th century.

It's striking that 16 of the 17 warmest years have all been this century," Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of Copernicus, told Reuters, adding there was overwhelming scientific consensus that man-made emissions were stoking the warming trend.

The Copernicus study is in line with a projection by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in November that 2017 would be second or third warmest behind 2016.

In 2016, an extra dose of heat came from El Nino, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean every few years.

But last year was the hottest year without an El Nino, according to Copernicus, run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

It pointed to a retreat of sea ice in the Arctic and prolonged dry conditions in southern Europe that helped trigger wildfires in Portugal and Spain in 2017 as examples of the sort of disruptions that are becoming more frequent in a warming climate.