Global Temperature

Current Highlights
Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.14° F (0.08° C) per decade since 1880, and the rate of warming over the past 40 years is more than twice that: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade since 1981.
2020 was the second-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s temperature data, and land areas were record warm.
Averaged across land and ocean, the 2020 surface temperature was 1.76° F (0.98° Celsius) warmer than the twentieth-century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C) and 2.14˚F (1.19˚C) warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900).
Despite a late-year La Niña event that cooled a wide swath of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2020 came just 0.04˚ Fahrenheit (0.02˚Celsius) shy of tying 2016 for warmest year on record.
The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005.
From 1900 to 1980 a new temperature record was set on average every 13.5 years; from 1981–2019, a new record was set every 3 years.
Full 2020 report

Yearly surface temperature compared to the 20^th-century average from 1880–2020. Blue bars indicate cooler-than-average years; red bars show warmer-than-average years. NOAA Climate.gov graph, based on data from the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Given the tremendous size and heat capacity of the global oceans, it takes a massive amount of heat energy to raise Earth’s average yearly surface temperature even a small amount. The roughly 2-degree Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) increase in global average surface temperature that has occurred since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900) might seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat. That extra heat is driving regional and seasonal temperature extremes, reducing snow cover and sea ice, intensifying heavy rainfall, and changing habitat ranges for plants and animals—expanding some and shrinking others. As the map below shows, most land areas have warmed faster than most ocean areas, and the Arctic is warming faster than most other regions.

Trends in global average surface temperature between 1990 and 2020 in degrees Fahrenheit per decade. Yellow indicates little to no change, while orange and red show places that warmed, and blue shows places that cooled. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from NOAA Centers for Environmental Information.

About surface temperature

The concept of an average temperature for the entire globe may seem odd. After all, at this very moment, the highest and lowest temperatures on Earth are likely more than 100°F (55°C) apart. Temperatures vary from night to day and between seasonal extremes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This means that some parts of Earth are quite cold while other parts are downright hot. To speak of the "average" temperature, then, may seem like nonsense. However, the concept of a global average temperature is convenient for detecting and tracking changes in Earth's energy budget—how much sunlight Earth absorbs minus how much it radiates to space as heat—over time.

To calculate a global average temperature, scientists begin with temperature measurements taken at locations around the globe. Because their goal is to track changes in temperature, measurements are converted from absolute temperature readings to temperature anomalies—the difference between the observed temperature and the long-term average temperature for each location and date. Multiple independent research groups across the world perform their own analysis of the surface temperature data, and they all show a similar upward trend.

Temperature records from NOAA, NASA, and the University of East Anglia all show an increase from the start of the 20^th-century through 2019. The year 2019 counted among the top three warmest years on record. Background image from NOAA DISCOVR/EPIC. Graph by NOAA Climate.gov based on data from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society's State of the Climate 2019.

Across inaccessible areas that have few measurements, scientists use surrounding temperatures and other information to estimate the missing values. Each value is then used to calculate a global temperature average. This process provides a consistent, reliable method for monitoring changes in Earth's surface temperature over time. Read more about how the global surface temperature record is built in our Climate Data Primer.

Global temperature in 2020

According to the 2020 Global Climate Report from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, every month of 2020 except December was in the top four warmest on record for that month. In December, the presence of a moderately strong La Niña event cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean and dampened the global average warmth. The month turned out as "only" the eighth warmest December on record.

This animation shows maps of monthly temperatures for January–December 2020 compared to the 1981–2010 average, with warm anomalies in red and cool anomalies in blue. The final frame of the animation shows the 2020 average. Note that the temperature range on the monthly maps is broader than the range for the annual average (plus or minus 9 degrees versus plus or minus 5 degrees).

Despite La Niña, 2020 ranked as the second-warmest year in the 141-year record for the combined land and ocean surface, and land areas were hottest on record. Many parts of Europe and Asia were record warm, including most of France and northern Portugal and Spain, most of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Russia, and southeastern China. An even larger portion of the globe was much warmer than average, including most of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The heat reached all the way to the Antarctic, where the station at Esperanza Base, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, appeared to set a new all-time record high temperature of 65.1 degrees Fahrenheit (18.4 degrees Celsius) on February 6, 2020.

For more regional details and 2020 climate statistics, see the 2020 Annual Climate Report from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

Past and future change in global temperature

Though warming has not been uniform across the planet, the upward trend in the globally averaged temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling. According to NOAA's 2020 Annual Climate Report the combined land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit ( 0.08 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1880; however, the average rate of increase since 1981 (0.18°C / 0.32°F) has been more than twice that rate.

Based on NOAA's global analysis, the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2005, and 7 of the 10 have occurred just since 2014. Looking back to 1988, a pattern emerges: except for 2011, as each new year is added to the historical record, it becomes one of the top 10 warmest on record at that time, but it is ultimately replaced as the “top ten” window shifts forward in time.

The amount of future warming Earth will experience depends on how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we emit in coming decades. Today, our activities—burning fossil fuels and clearing forests—add about 11 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year. According to the 2017 U.S. Climate Science Special Report, if yearly emissions continue to increase rapidly, as they have since 2000, models project that by the end of this century, global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1901-1960 average, and possibly as much as 10.2 degrees warmer. If annual emissions increase more slowly and begin to decline significantly by 2050, models project temperatures would still be at least 2.4 degrees warmer than the first half of the 20^th century, and possibly up to 5.9 degrees warmer.