NASA Climate Spiral 1880-2022

  • Released Thursday, January 12, 2023
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The NASA climate spiral 1880-2022. This version is in Celsius; see below for an alternate version in Fahrenheit. Both a 30 fps, 60 second duration video and 60 fps, 30 second duration video are available.

The visualization presents monthly global temperature anomalies between the years 1880-2022. Temperature anomalies are deviations from a long term global avergage. In this case the period 1951-1980 is used to define the baseline for the anomaly. These temperatures are based on the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4), an estimate of global surface temperature change. The data file used to create this visualization is publically accessible here.

The term 'climate spiral' describes an animated radial plot of global temperatures. Climate scientist Ed Hawkins from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading popularized this style of visualization in 2016.

The Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) is a NASA laboratory managed by the Earth Sciences Division of the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.

The NASA climate spiral 1880-2022. This version is in Fahrenheit; see above for an alternate version in Celsius. Both a 30 fps, 60 second duration video and 60 fps, 30 second duration video are available.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, January 12, 2023.
This page was last updated on Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 10:57 PM EDT.

Datasets used

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