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2017 was among the hottest years ever recorded, government scientists reported Thursday.

The year was the second-hottest in recorded history, NASA said, while scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 2017 was the third-warmest they’ve ever recorded.

The two government agencies use different methodologies to calculate global temperatures, but by either standard, the 2017 results make the past four years the hottest period in their 138-year archive.

2017 achieved a temperature of 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.84 degrees Celsius), above the average temperature seen in the 20th century, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

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The Trump administration unveiled a controversial plan Thursday to permit drilling in all U.S. waters, including protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic, where oil and gas exploration is opposed by governors from New Jersey to Florida, nearly a dozen attorneys general, more than 100 U.S. lawmakers and the Defense Department.

More than 3 billion barrels of oil is recoverable on the outer continental shelf, along with more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Interior Department, which announced the plan. States stand to gain royalties from extraction of these natural resources, and drilling could create hundreds of jobs.

This year's historic hurricane season exposed a little-known public health threat: Highly polluted sites that can be inundated by floodwaters, potentially spreading toxic contamination.

In Houston, more than a dozen Superfund sites were flooded by Hurricane Harvey, with breaches reported at two. In the Southeast and Puerto Rico, Superfund sites were battered by driving rains and winds from Irma and Maria.

The vulnerable sites highlighted by AP's review are scattered across the nation, but Florida, New Jersey and California have the most, and the most people living near them. They are in largely low-income, heavily minority neighborhoods, the data show.

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Nebraska regulators approved the Keystone XL pipeline Monday, clearing the last big regulatory hurdle for the controversial oil project after nearly a decade of bitter protests from environmentalists and landowners and delivering a win for President Donald Trump's drive for U.S. "energy dominance."

The Nebraska Public Service Commission voted 3-2 to approve the route through the state for the pipeline that will transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of crude from Canada's oil sands and North Dakota's shale fields to oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. Former President Barack Obama had blocked the permits for the pipeline in 2015, citing the oil sands' impact on climate change, but Trump quickly reversed that decision after taking office.

The Environmental Protection Agency canceled a scheduled speaking appearance at a conference in Rhode Island on Monday -- at which three government scientists were set to talk about climate change.

John Konkus, an EPA spokesman and former campaign worker for President Donald Trump in Florida, confirmed that the agency scientists would not speak at the program.

When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, U.S. oil refining plummeted to record lows. Now, nearly three weeks later, six key refineries remain shut down and an additional 11 are either struggling to come back on line or operating at a significantly reduced rate.

That slowdown, coupled with predictions of decreased demand in the wake of Hurricane Irma and the devastating earthquake that struck Mexico last week, has shifted oil pressures in other places, too. And none may be quite as vulnerable as the tank farms in Cushing, Oklahoma.