Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2023

  • Released Friday, January 12, 2024
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This color-coded map in Robinson projection displays a progression of changing global surface temperature anomalies. Normal temperatures are shown in white. Higher than normal temperatures are shown in red and lower than normal temperatures are shown in blue. Normal temperatures are calculated over the 30 year baseline period 1951-1980. The maps are averages over a running 24 month window. The final frame represents global temperature anomalies in 2023.

Earth's average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Global temperatures in 2023 were around 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA's baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported.

In 2023, hundreds of millions of people around the world experienced extreme heat, and each month from June through December set a global record for the respective month. July was the hottest month ever recorded. Overall, Earth was about 2.45 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.36 degrees Celsius) warmer in 2023 than the late 19th-century average, when modern record-keeping began.

“The exceptional warming that we’re experiencing is not something we’ve seen before as a species,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS. “It’s driven primarily by our fossil fuel emissions, and we're seeing the impacts in heat waves, intense rainfall, and coastal flooding.”

Though scientists have conclusive evidence that the planet’s long-term warming trend is driven by human activitiy, they still examine other events that can effect yearly or multi-year changes in climate such as El Nino, aerosols and pollution, and volcanic eruptions.

NASA's full dataset of global surface temperatures as well as full details with code of how NASA scientists conducted the analysis, are publicly available from GISS.

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.

For more information about NASA's Earth science programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/earth

This visualizarion is in an equirectangular projection optimised for spherical displays such as Science On a Sphere. This color-coded map displays a progression of changing global surface temperature anomalies. Normal temperatures are shown in white. Higher than normal temperatures are shown in red and lower than normal temperatures are shown in blue. Normal temperatures are calculated over the 30 year baseline period 1951-1980. The maps are averages over a running 24 month window. The final frame represents global temperature anomalies in 2023.

The file time.txt is a label file containing the animation time for each frame number

This color-coded map in Orthographic projection displays a progression of changing global surface temperature anomalies. Normal temperatures are shown in white. Higher than normal temperatures are shown in red and lower than normal temperatures are shown in blue. Normal temperatures are calculated over the 30 year baseline period 1951-1980. The maps are averages over a running 24 month window. The final frame represents global temperature anomalies in 2023.

Colortable in both degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius.

Colortable in both degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius.

Credits

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

Data provided by Robert B. Schmunk (NASA/GSFC GISS)

This page was originally published on Friday, January 12, 2024.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 12:17 AM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

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.