What is the Yearly Average Temperature?

This is the average surface temperature of the whole Earth over a full year. It is based on measurements taken by thousands of weather stations on land and sea.

The Yearly Average Temperature is a crucial metric because the change in the Earth’s average temperature causes major transformations to our planet. It puts the existence of many species – including humans – at risk.

The Yearly Average Temperature is directly related to the Yearly Average Temperature Anomaly. The shapes of the graphs are the exact same. The average temperature between 1850 and 1900 is about 13.84 °C (56.91 °F), which is the pre-industrial baseline at which the anomaly is zero. For example the average temperature in 2020 was 15.11 °C (59.20 °F), which is 1.27 °C (2.28 °F) above the pre-industrial baseline (anomaly).

Units and measures

Degree Celsius (°C) or degree Fahrenheit (°F) per year

Insights from this chart

Since 1850

The overall increase in temperature since 1850 is driven by human emissions of several greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and others, which cause an increased greenhouse effect. We, humans, are still emitting more greenhouse gases and are causing more warming.

The average temperature started rising in the 1920s, however, during the 1945 to 1975 period, heavy atmospheric pollution caused by humans cooled the Earth by reflecting Sunlight, a process known as global dimming. The cooling effect from global dimming was reduced significantly by several global efforts to reduce air pollution.

Since the late 1970s, there has been a steady and very rapid increase in the global average temperature anomaly. The year 2023 was the hottest full year on record, with an exceptionally hot second half of the year. On top of steady anthropogenic warming there is currently extra warming from El Niño conditions along with extreme Northern Atlantic temperatures. The value for 2024 represents the last 12 months of available temperature data and is expected to remain high.

Last ~ 2000 Years

For a large part of the last 2000 years the global average temperature was around 14 °C (57.2 °F). The warming of the last 100 years, currently above 15 °C (59 °F), is very large and extremely fast compared to any temperature change in the long period before.

While the global temperature does change over time due to natural causes, human greenhouse gas emissions cause changes that really disrupt our planet. If we, humanity, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we can halt global warming.

About the data

For values since 1850 we primarily use data from the IGCC, which is an average of four sources: HadCRUT5, NOAAGlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth and Kadow et al.. The IGCC data updates yearly, to estimate warming for the current year the latest updates from sources are used directly. This data is gathered using a huge number of weather stations on land, ships, buoys and more.

For the years leading up to 1850 we use PAGES2k Consortium reconstruction data. It is based on models where temperatures are reconstructed from proxies. Proxy analysis has higher uncertainty, and we display the smoothed set to highlight the longer term fluctuations.

The value for the current year is actually the average for the last 12 months, for example in March we include values since the previous April. This approach allows us to include the latest data for a full year and avoids showing possibly misleading values when using shorter time periods.

Data sources

IGCC Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence, Piers M. Forster et al.
Credits: Credits: Smith, C., Walsh, T., Gillett, N., Hall, B., Hauser, M., Krummel, P., Lamb, W., Lamboll, R., Lan, X., Muhle, J., Palmer, M., Ribes, A., Schumacher, D., Seneviratne, S., Trewin, B., von Schuckmann, K., & Forster, P. (2024). ClimateIndicator/data: Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023 revision (v2024.05.29a) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8000192Update cycle: yearlyDelay: up to a year

HadCRUT5 Met Office Hadley Centre
Credits: Morice, C.P., J.J. Kennedy, N.A. Rayner, J.P. Winn, E. Hogan, R.E. Killick, R.J.H. Dunn, T.J. Osborn, P.D. Jones and I.R. Simpson (in press) An updated assessment of near-surface temperature change from 1850: the HadCRUT5 dataset. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) doi:10.1029/2019JD032361Update cycle: monthlyDelay: Less than 1 month

NOAA Global Temp. v6.0 NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information
Credits: Huang, B., X. Yin, M. J. Menne, R. Vose, and H. Zhang, NOAA Global Surface Temperature Dataset (NOAAGlobalTemp), Version 6.0.0 [indicate subset used]. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.Update cycle: monthlyDelay: Less than 1 month

Temperature Data Berkeley Earth
Credits: Rohde, R. A. and Hausfather, Z.: The Berkeley Earth Land/Ocean Temperature Record, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 3469–3479, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3469-2020, 2020.Update cycle: monthlyDelay: ~ 1 to 4 month

Kadow et al. Kadow et al.
Credits: Kadow, C., Hall, D.M. & Ulbrich, U. Artificial intelligence reconstructs missing climate information. Nat. Geosci. 13, 408–413 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0582-5

PAGES2k Common Era Surface Temperature Reconstructions NCEI NOAA
Credits: PAGES2k Consortium: Raphael Neukom, Luis A. Barboza, Michael P. Erb, Feng Shi, Julien Emile-Geay, Michael N. Evans, Jörg Franke, Darrell S. Kaufman, Lucie Lücke, Kira Rehfeld, Andrew Schurer,Feng Zhu,Stefan Brönnimann, Gregory J. Hakim, Benjamin J. Henley, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Nicholas McKay, Veronika Valler, Lucien von Gunten. 2019. Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era. Nature Geoscience, 12. doi: 10.1038/s41561-019-0400-0. Data accessed on May 4. 2022