Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies for 1888,1918,1948,1978, 2008

  • Released Thursday, October 8, 2009
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Each year, scientists at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyze global temperature data. A rapid warming trend has occurred over the past 30 years. Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis of surface air temperature measurements. In this analysis, 2008 is the ninth warmest year in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1881. 2005 is the hottest year on record, and 2007 is tied with 1998 for second place. The Earth is experiencing the warmest level of the current interglacial period, or interval between ice ages, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. This color-coded map displays a long term progression of changing global surface temperatures, from 1881 to 2008. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and dark blue indicates the greatest cooling.

1888 - This image is a five year average from 1886 through 1890.

1888 - This image is a five year average from 1886 through 1890.

Colortable for global temperature anomaly data.

Colortable for global temperature anomaly data.

1918 - This image shows a five year average from 1916 through 1920.

1918 - This image shows a five year average from 1916 through 1920.

1948 - This image shows a five year average from 1946 through 1950.

1948 - This image shows a five year average from 1946 through 1950.

1978 - This image shows a five year average from 1976 through 1980.

1978 - This image shows a five year average from 1976 through 1980.

2008 - This image shows a five year average from 2004 through 2008.

2008 - This image shows a five year average from 2004 through 2008.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio Data provided by Robert B. Schmunk (NASA/GSFC GISS)

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 8, 2009.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:54 PM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Papers used in this visualization

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth_temp.html

Datasets used in this visualization

  • GISTEMP [GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)]

    ID: 585
    Type: Model Sensor: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)

    The GISS Surface Temperature Analysis version 4 (GISTEMP v4) is an estimate of global surface temperature change. Graphs and tables are updated around the middle of every month using current data files from NOAA GHCN v4 (meteorological stations) and ERSST v5 (ocean areas), combined as described in our publications Hansen et al. (2010) and Lenssen et al. (2019).

    Credit: Lenssen, N., G. Schmidt, J. Hansen, M. Menne, A. Persin, R. Ruedy, and D. Zyss, 2019: Improvements in the GISTEMP uncertainty model. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124, no. 12, 6307-6326, doi:10.1029/2018JD029522.

    This dataset can be found at: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

    See all pages that use this dataset

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.