2016 was the second hottest year for the U.S. in more than 120 years of record keeping, government scientists announced on Monday, marking 20 above-average years in a row.

Every state had a temperature ranking at least in the top seven, with two, Georgia and Alaska, recording their hottest year.The announcement comes a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the U.S. data, and NASA are expected to announce that 2016 set the record for the hottest year globally. Both the global record and the U.S. near-record are largely attributable to greenhouse gas-driven warming of the planet.In addition to the pervasive warmth over the last year, the U.S. also had to deal with 15 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Together, they totaled more than $46 billion in losses and included several disastrous rain-driven flooding events.These events, along with continued drought, lay bare the challenge for the country to learn how to cope with and prepare for a changing climate, said Deke Arndt, the climate monitoring chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.The temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 2.9°F above the 20th century average for 2016, displacing 2015 and ranking only behind 2012, when searing heat waves hit the middle of the country.More notable than the back-to-back second place years, Arndt said, was that 2016 was the 20th consecutive warmer-than-normal year for the U.S. and that the five hottest years for the country have all happened since 1998. Those streaks mirror global trends, with 15 of the 16 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century and no record cold year globally since 1911.Next week, both NOAA and NASA will release their global temperature numbers for 2016, which is expected to beat out 2015 as the hottest year on record. While El Niño played a role in boosting temperatures in both years, scientists have shown that human-caused warming is the main reason that global and U.S. temperatures have reached such heights.The U.S. also had to contend the second highest number of billion-dollar disasters in the past 37 years. These included four inland flooding events, including those that inundated parts of Texas and Louisiana after torrential rains.