Earth’s temperature, place by place, 1880–2025
The hottest year of grandparents’ youth would now be a cool one
Around London, nine of the last ten years were warmer than 1959, the hottest year between 1951 and 1980. On 85% of the land that has measurements for both periods, the average of the last ten years is above the hottest year of 1951–1980, the decades when today’s grandparents were young. Below, NASA’s measurements are set on a globe, year by year, and every town has its own numbers.
1880: the first year of the record#
Each colour compares one year with the same place’s average for 1951–1980. Blue was colder than that average, red was warmer. Hatched areas had no thermometers within reach yet.
Sixty years in which no patch lasts#
Scroll and the years run. Warm and cold patches come and go, and none of them lasts. For the planet as a whole, every year from 1880 to 1939 was colder than the 1951–1980 average.
1976: the last cold year#
The early 1940s run warm and the 1960s are cooler again. Then comes 1976, the last year in which the planet was colder than its 1951–1980 average. Every year since has been warmer.
The blue disappears#
From here the red spreads out from the Arctic and the continents. The eleven hottest years in NASA’s record are the last eleven, 2015 to 2025. The hottest is 2024, at +1.29 °C.
The last ten years, averaged#
+1.02 °Cthe planet, 2016–2025 against 1951–1980Against 1880–1909, the first thirty years of the record, the rise is 1.28 °C. Land has warmed 1.8 times as much as the oceans, which is why the continents stand out on the globe.
How many of the last ten years beat the old record?#
For each place, the old record is its hottest year between 1951 and 1980. This map counts how many of the years 2016–2025 were hotter than that. On 28% of the planet’s surface, all ten were. On 8% none was, and 88% of that area is ocean.
The Arctic: 2.6 times the planet#
+2.71 °Cnorth of 66°NThe brightest patch on the globe lies in the Arctic Ocean at the northern edge of the Kara Sea (around 81°N, 73°E): +4.32 °C. Sea ice reflects sunlight and the open water left behind absorbs it, so the loss of ice adds heat.
Measured as a trend since 1979, the Arctic has warmed nearly four times as fast as the planet, according to a 2022 study.
Europe: the continent that warmed most#
+2.11 °CEurope, to the UralsThat is 2.1 times the planetary figure. The EU’s Copernicus service also puts Europe first: since the 1980s it has warmed twice as fast as the global average, faster than any other continent.
England: 367 years of temperature records#
+1.35 °Ccentral England, 2016–2025 against 1951–1980The Central England series is the longest instrumental temperature record in the world; its monthly values begin in 1659. The hottest year in it is 2025, at 11.23 °C. The ten hottest all fall in this century.
No year before 1990 reached 10.7 °C. Since then four have reached 11 °C: 2014, 2022, 2023 and 2025. Winters have warmed most, by 1.7 °C against 1951–1980; summers by 1.4 °C.
Champagne houses plant in the south; Lincolnshire reaches 40 °C#
Taittinger planted its first vines near Chilham, in Kent, in 2017. Vranken-Pommery planted at Pinglestone, in Hampshire, the same year. WineGB, the trade body for English and Welsh wine, counts 4,841 hectares under vine.
In central England the growing season, April to October, averaged 12.7 °C in 1951–1980 and 14.0 °C in 2016–2025. On 19 July 2022 Coningsby recorded 40.3 °C, the first time the UK passed 40 °C.
The patch that did not warm#
+0.04 °Csouth of Greenland, 2016–2025 against 1880–1909Between 48° and 60°N and between 46° and 20°W, the surface of the Atlantic is, on average, at its 1880–1909 temperature; against 1951–1980 it is 0.26 °C warmer. Between 1880–1909 and 2016–2025 the northern hemisphere as a whole warmed by 1.65 °C.
A 2015 study argued that the patch may be due to a weakening of the current that carries warm water north through the Atlantic. A 2022 study found that changes in the atmosphere alone can account for about half of the cooling. The cause is still disputed.
The tropics: a small rise, and the earliest broken records#
+0.86 °Cbetween the tropicsLess than the planetary average. But tropical years resemble one another, so a small rise is enough to leave behind everything measured before.
Around Lagos and around Singapore, the last year that was not hotter than the 1951–1980 record was 1999. Around Nairobi it was 2001.
Four generations, one climate; then another#
Around London, children born in 1900, 1925, 1950 and 1975 grew up in the same climate: the averages of their first fifteen years differ by less than 0.2 °C.
A child born in 2000 grew up in a climate 0.8 °C warmer than that of a child born in 1975. The last ten years are 1.4 °C warmer than that 1975 childhood.
Any town or city: the old record and the last ten years
The numbers come from the weather stations within 250 km.
The globe can be turned with a finger or the mouse.
There are not enough stations around this place with measurements from both 1951–1980 and 2016–2025.
The same place, for each generation
Each line compares the last ten years with the first fifteen years of someone born in that year.
How much has each part of the world warmed?
The same ten years, 2016–2025, set beside two earlier periods. Regional values are computed from NASA’s 2° grid; the planetary value is the one NASA publishes.
The 1880–1909 column compares regional averages, and in those years large parts of Africa, South America and the Arctic had no measurements, so it is less certain than the first column.
| Region | against 1951–1980 | against 1880–1909 |
|---|---|---|
| Planet (NASA’s table) | +1.02 | +1.28 |
| Land | +1.48 | +1.91 |
| Oceans | +0.83 | +1.06 |
| Arctic (north of 66°N) | +2.71 | +3.58 |
| Europe (to the Urals) | +2.11 | +2.61 |
| Asia | +1.82 | +2.27 |
| North America | +1.57 | +2.23 |
| Africa | +1.31 | +1.36 |
| South America | +1.18 | +1.67 |
| Oceania | +1.08 | +1.40 |
| Between the tropics | +0.86 | +1.04 |
| Atlantic south of Greenland (48–60°N, 46–20°W) | +0.26 | +0.04 |
What was the old record in large cities, and which was the last year that did not beat it?
Twenty-four cities, with the same numbers any place gets in the search above. Where one of the last ten years has no measurements, the third column shows nine.
| City | Hottest year of 1951–1980 | Years in 2016–2025 hotter than it | Last year that did not beat it | 2016–2025 against 1951–1980 (°C) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 1959 | 9 / 10 | 2021 | +1.51 |
| Manchester | 1959 | 8 / 10 | 2021 | +1.45 |
| Edinburgh | 1959 | 8 / 10 | 2021 | +1.33 |
| Bucharest | 1966 | 10 / 10 | 2011 | +2.09 |
| Cluj-Napoca | 1951 | 9 / 10 | 2021 | +2.04 |
| Iași | 1966 | 10 / 10 | 2011 | +2.13 |
| Timișoara | 1951 | 10 / 10 | 2011 | +2.03 |
| Constanța | 1966 | 9 / 10 | 2017 | +2.10 |
| Chișinău | 1975 | 9 / 10 | 2021 | +2.21 |
| Paris | 1959 | 10 / 10 | 2013 | +2.00 |
| Reims | 1959 | 10 / 10 | 2013 | +2.17 |
| Madrid | 1961 | 10 / 10 | 2013 | +1.92 |
| Reykjavik | 1964 | 7 / 10 | 2024 | +1.19 |
| Murmansk | 1974 | 5 / 10 | 2023 | +1.92 |
| New York City | 1953 | 6 / 10 | 2025 | +1.50 |
| Mexico City | 1969 | 10 / 10 | 2010 | +1.70 |
| São Paulo | 1977 | 10 / 10 | 2013 | +1.63 |
| Cairo | 1960 | 8 / 9 | 2017 | +1.57 |
| Lagos | 1973 | 10 / 10 | 1999 | +1.48 |
| Nairobi | 1976 | 9 / 9 | 2001 | +1.19 |
| Delhi | 1953 | 8 / 10 | 2020 | +0.88 |
| Singapore | 1980 | 10 / 10 | 1999 | +1.55 |
| Tokyo | 1979 | 9 / 10 | 2017 | +1.51 |
| Sydney | 1980 | 7 / 10 | 2022 | +1.23 |
How the numbers were worked out
What is compared
Every value is a difference from the same place’s own average for 1951–1980, the reference period NASA uses. People who are grandparents today were children or young adults in those years.
A year’s value is the mean of its twelve months; the year counts when a place has measurements for at least ten of them. The data run to August 2026, so 2025 is the last complete year.
Two NASA analyses
The globe uses the analysis that combines land and ocean, in which one weather station informs the map up to 1,200 km away. That fills gaps and blurs local detail.
The town numbers use the land-only analysis, in which a station counts up to 250 km away. They therefore describe the region around a place, on a grid of 2° squares (about 220 km from north to south), and neighbouring towns often share a square. Of the 7,201 towns and cities in the list, 6,552 have measurements for both periods; the others have too few stations nearby.
The old record
For each place, the old record is the hottest calendar year between 1951 and 1980, provided the place has measurements for at least 25 of those 30 years and for at least nine of the last ten. Then the years of 2016–2025 that were hotter than it are counted.
On land the sum can be done in 5,022 squares. On 85% of their area the average of 2016–2025 is above the old record; on 32%, all ten years are above it. Over the whole surface of the planet, land and ocean together (the 1,200 km analysis), all ten years are above the old record on 28% and none on 8%.
A generation’s climate
A person’s childhood climate is the mean of the fifteen calendar years starting with the year of birth, when at least twelve of them have measurements.
England
The England figures come from the Met Office’s Central England Temperature series, which represents a roughly triangular area enclosed by Lancashire, London and Bristol. They are actual temperatures, not differences from an average, so they are not set beside NASA’s figures. In that series seven of the last ten years were warmer than 1959; around London, on NASA’s grid, nine were.
The limits of the numbers
A 2° square mixes a town with the villages, hills and plains around it, so a particular street can be warmer or cooler than its region’s number. An annual mean temperature leaves out rain, wind and the extremes of a single day, and hides the fact that seasons warm at different rates.
Before 1950 large areas had no stations; they are hatched on the globe and missing from the town numbers. Regional averages for 1880–1909 rest only on the areas measured at the time.
Sources
- GISTEMP Team, 2026: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP), version 4, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The 2° gridded files (1,200 km and 250 km) and the table of global means, created on 8 September 2026 and downloaded on 7 October 2026. Lenssen, N. et al., 2024, “A GISTEMPv4 observational uncertainty ensemble”, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 129.
- Met Office Hadley Centre, Central England Temperature (HadCET), monthly means from 1659, Open Government Licence. Manley, G., 1974, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 100; Parker, D. E. et al., 1992, Int. J. Climatol., 12.
- Met Office, Record high temperatures verified, 28 July 2022.
- Champagne Taittinger, Domaine Evremond. WineGB, Pinglestone Estate, 26 November 2021, and industry data.
- Rantanen, M. et al., 2022, “The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979”, Communications Earth & Environment, 3.
- Copernicus Climate Change Service and World Meteorological Organization, European State of the Climate 2024.
- Rahmstorf, S. et al., 2015, “Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation”, Nature Climate Change, 5. He, C. et al., 2022, “A North Atlantic warming hole without ocean circulation”, Geophysical Research Letters, 49.
- Towns: GeoNames, CC BY 4.0. Outlines: Natural Earth, public domain.