It only means that ALL compilations of the global average temperature, not particularly accurate before the use of weather satellites in 1979, have been made DURING a warming trend.
The warming trend started in the late 1600s.
Some haphazard surface measurements began in the late 1800s.
Since all the measurements were DURING a warming trend, new "records" are expected until the warming trend ends.
They are not shocking news !
If we go for a decade or two with no "warmest year on record" declarations, that would be a sign that a cooling trend began.
Our planet always has warming trends or cooling trends.
The temperature does not remain constant.
No prior trend was ever permanent.
And there was no correlation between CO2 levels and the temperature, per climate reconstructions using proxies, such as ice cores from Antarctica.
For the past 500,000 years, those ice cores show that temperature peaks led CO2 level peaks by hundreds of years.
CO2 changes could NOT have caused the temperature changes because they happened hundreds of years AFTER the temperature changes.
The logical explanation is that natural causes of climate change, in progress for 4.5 billion years, warmed (or cooled) the oceans, and the warming (or cooling) oceans gradually released (or absorbed) CO2 into (or from) the atmosphere.
The announcements of "the warmest year" are not newsworthy -- they tell us what we already know -- our planet has been warming for hundreds of years.
In fact, we have been living with global warming for the past 45 years (no warming from 1940 to 1975, in spite of rising CO2).
There was a flat temperature trend from 2003 to mid-2015, as CO2 rose a lot, but the overall trend since 1975 was warming.
In the 4.5 billion year history of our planet, only the years from 1975 to today have had a strong positive correlation of CO2 levels and the global average temperature.
So never mind the other 99.999% of Earth's climate history, and do exactly what the climate alarmists say, without question.
And don't you dare be like me, and tell people you have enjoyed the past 45 years of mild global warming, and want more warming.
That could lead to a jail sentence in the Biden era.