Earth ID: 3684

Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1881 to 2009 for Science On a Sphere

Visualizations by Lori Perkins Released on March 3, 2010

Each year, scientists at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyze global temperature data. The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology. The global record warm year, in the period of near-global instrumental measurements (since the late 1800s), was 2005. This color-coded map displays a long term progression of changing global surface temperatures, from 1881 to 2009. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and dark blue indicates the greatest cooling.

For more information on the data used to generate these images, please see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp.

Visualization Credits

Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
James Hansen Ph.D. (NASA/GSFC GISS): Scientist
Makiko Sato Ph.D. (NASA/GSFC GISS): Scientist
Reto A. Ruedy Ph.D. (NASA/GSFC GISS): Scientist
Ken Lo Ph.D. (NASA/GSFC GISS): Scientist
David Lea Ph.D. (University of California, Santa Barbara): Scientist
Martin Medina-Elizade (University of California, Santa Barbara): Scientist

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

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

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3684

Data Used: