Climate Change: Global Temperature

Author:
LuAnn Dahlman
Sunday, August 30, 2009

Updated January 26, 2016

Temperatures measured on land and at sea for more than a century show that Earth's globally
averaged surface temperature is experiencing a long-term warming trend.
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 100F (55C) 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 condition 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 direct temperature readings to temperature anomalies-values
that represent the difference between the observed temperature and the long-term average
temperature for each location and date. Across inaccessible areas that have few measurements,
scientists use surrounding temperatures and other information to fill in the missing values. Each
value is then used to calculate a global temperature average. This process provides a consistent,
reliable method for monitoring Earth's surface temperature over time.
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. Since 1976, every year
including 2015 has had an average global temperature warmer than the long-term average. Over
this 38-year period, temperature warmed at an average of 0.50 F (0.28 C) per decade over land
and 0.22 F (0.12 C) per decade over the ocean.
For the last 50 years, global temperature rose at an average rate of about 0.13C (around onequarter degree Fahrenheit) per decadearound twice as fast as the 0.06C per decade increase
observed over the previous half-century. In the next 20 years, scientists project that global
average temperature will rise by around 0.2C (about one-third of a degree Fahrenheit) per
decade.
Further Reading
Hansen, James, The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature, GISS Surface Temperature
Analysis, Updated July 12, 2005.

Herring, David, Earth's Temperature Tracker, NASA Earth Observatory. Published November 5,
2007.
IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group 1 to the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A.
Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Data
Annual global temperature anomalies for land and ocean combined, expressed as departures
from the 1901-2000 average. National Climatic Data Center.

.
Highlights:

In 2015, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.62F
(0.90C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest temperature among all 136
years in the 18802015 record; it marks the fourth time a global temperature record has
been set this century.

The 17 warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 18 years.