“(It’s) very likely that some of the warming we had in parts of the Pacific Rim and parts of the equatorial pacific region was associated with El Nino,” Andresen said. “However, again, this is a global value, and even though El Nino is a large phenomenon, my personal opinion is the role it played probably was somewhat minor, and we’re still looking at a distinct upward trend in temperatures.”

Andresen said he does not expect 2017 to be another record-breaking year, but said the long-term trend of global warming will only continue barring unexpected change.

The data these conclusions are based on is collected by government organizations, notably the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Society of Environmental Journalists president and climate journalist Bobby Magill said in recent years, the EPA has become less and less transparent, allowing reporters like him limited access to government climate scientists.

“During the (President Barack) Obama administration, SEJ protested the EPA’s crackdown on journalists’ access to government scientists and to specific officials,” Magill said. “We don’t know if that's changed yet, but things were not particularly rosy in the Obama administration. In fact, we thought that the government transparency probably hit a low point during the Obama administration, and you know, each successive administration seems to be less and less transparent.”

Scientists in general have expressed their disdain toward both a perceived anti-science attitude in the President Donald Trump administration and the current atmosphere of public mistrust towards the scientific community. A group of scientists will be marching on Washington, D.C. on Earth Day to protest the current atmosphere for scientific research.

“That’s probably the biggest concern out there is people distrust sources of information,” senior associate director of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism David Poulson said. "They distrust the government, they distrust climate experts, they certainly distrust people in our field, they distrust media."

With new EPA director Scott Pruitt officially taking office last week, the EPA will now be free to set the course for Trump-era climate policy. It is unknown yet what form that will take, but Pruitt’s colleagues expressed disdain toward the EPA’s past practices in an introductory letter, signaling that Pruitt will engineer major changes in the organization’s operation, according to CNN.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, worried the new administration could even attempt to twist government scientific data, has set up an anonymous online hotline for scientists to report any such unethical data practices. So far, fears of data manipulation under the Trump administration have been unfounded. 

Magill said climate journalists should be on guard for misleading data practices under any presidential administration.

“You have to verify (government) data, and you have to make sure that you put government information into context with what other established science says, or what frankly, emerging science as well,” Magill said. “As a reporter, you talk to other people and other scientists and experts who can either corroborate or dispute that information and try to paint as accurate a picture as possible.”

Government data is a critical component of the scientific understanding of the climate change epidemic, and with the record heat of the past three years signaling an acceleration of global warming, that understanding will be crucial to maintain going forward.

“If anything, now we need to have this information more than ever, and it has to be objective, quality information,” Andresen said. “That's absolutely critical. And I think that all of us — the general public and all of us have to be educated about this issue.”