It's the third year in a row it's been the hottest year on record according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
Each organization has different methods for calculating an average global temperature, but both came up with the same record-breaking results.
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NOAA found the Earth was 1.69 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average while NASA found the global average was 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.
This finding wasn't much of a surprise to the scientific community since the first eight months of 2016 all broke monthly high temperature records and the remaining months were in the top five warmest.
All these individual broken records allowed the entire year to sail into the history books as the hottest since 1880 when record keeping began.
Since then, the surface of the planet has seen temperatures rise about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and most of that warming has happened in the last few decades.
Sixteen of the 17 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.
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