What lies behind climate change and global warming - globally, by continent, country, US climate region, US state and UK region? Compare temperature with rainfall, frost, snow, sunshine and humidity, alongside global CO₂ and SO₂ - the greenhouse gas driving warming, and the pollution that masked part of it. Explore the story through Climate Eras, Climate History or Night Warming.
Latest data 2025 · annual
Climate Insights – Global
Precipitation, Sunshine, Frost and Snow are converted to standard deviations from their own average so they can share an axis with Temperature anomalies.
Metric
Insight
10-Yr AverageActual Year
Climate History
47 of 47 events
1783Volcanic
Laki (Skaftá Fires) eruption
An eight-month fissure eruption in Iceland that put more sulphur dioxide into the air than any other eruption in the historical record. A 'dry fog' spread across Europe, the Northern Hemisphere winter of 1783-84 ran about 1.5°C colder than normal, and the summer of 1784 was cold too.
The largest eruption in recorded history. It cooled the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.5°C and produced 1816's 'Year Without a Summer', with crops failing widely across Europe and North America.
The eruption destroyed most of the island, and the tsunamis it set off killed more than 36,000 people. It cooled the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.3°C over 1884-86.
The largest volcanic eruption anywhere in the world in the 20th century - 13 km3 of magma, about thirty times the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption - at Novarupta in Alaska on 6-8 June 1912. Ash reached 100,000 ft and cooled the Northern Hemisphere by roughly 0.3°C over 1912-13. Unlike a tropical eruption such as Pinatubo, a high-latitude eruption's haze stays in its own hemisphere, so it did little to the Southern Hemisphere.
After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.
One of the strongest La Niñas since instrument-based ENSO records begin in 1950, and part of a run of cool Pacific years through the mid-1950s. La Niña cools global temperatures slightly for a year or two while it lasts, and shifts rainfall patterns worldwide.
Charles David Keeling begins continuous measurements of atmospheric CO₂ at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, starting at about 315 ppm. The record has risen every year since and is now the longest unbroken direct measurement of CO₂ anywhere - the 'Keeling Curve'.
The West African Sahel drought begins abruptly (1969-70), rainfall dropping by up to 40%, severe enough to register in global land-precipitation records.
Major US federal legislation setting strict limits on sulphur dioxide and particulate pollution. It began a long fall in US sulphate emissions, and with it the removal of a haze that had been masking part of the underlying greenhouse warming.
One of the strongest El Niños on record. It contributed to failed grain harvests in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in 1972, and to a sharp rise in world food prices - an early sign of how far ENSO's reach extends.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - switches from its cool to its warm phase in 1976-77. The change was abrupt enough to be called the 1976-77 Pacific Climate Shift: it warmed Alaska and the west coast of North America, and reorganised North Pacific fisheries.
Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.
A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.
The strongest El Niño since 1950 on NOAA's Relative Oceanic Niño Index, which strips out the background warming of the tropical oceans before ranking events. On the older index that leaves that warming in, 2015-16 comes out on top instead.
British Antarctic Survey scientists Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jon Shanklin publish their Halley and Faraday measurements on 16 May 1985, showing October ozone over Antarctica had fallen to about two-thirds of earlier decades. The cause is traced to chlorofluorocarbons, and the finding triggers the fastest international environmental response on record.
Signed in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, the Montreal Protocol turned out to be one of the most consequential climate treaties ever agreed. CFCs are potent greenhouse gases in their own right, and NOAA estimates the Protocol prevented up to 2°C of warming by 2100 - around 1°C from the emissions avoided, and up to 1°C more by sparing forests and other carbon sinks from increased ultraviolet radiation.
Atmospheric CO₂ passes 350 ppm. In the same year James Hansen told a US Senate committee that global warming was already detectable, the moment it entered mainstream politics. Twenty years later, in 2008, Hansen proposed 350 ppm as the safe upper limit - a level the world had already left behind.
One of the strongest La Niñas on record, arriving straight after the 1986-87 El Niño - a swing from one extreme of the Pacific cycle to the other in barely a year.
Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern
Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupts in June 1991, the largest eruption since 1912. Its sulphate haze cooled global surface temperature by about 0.5°C in 1992 and reduced rainfall over land for about two years, before the warming trend resumed.
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Atlantic sea temperatures, roughly 60-70 years long - flips to its warm phase in 1995. Warm phases are linked to more active Atlantic hurricane seasons, wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe and more frequent drought in the central and western United States.
One of the strongest El Niños on record, and the one the textbook El Niño pattern is usually drawn from. It pushed 1998 to what was then the warmest year ever measured, and set off the first global-scale coral bleaching event.
The first recorded global-scale coral bleaching event, during the strong 1997-98 El Niño (peak ONI +2.3) followed by a strong La Niña that brought further warm-water stress to the Pacific.
Escalating severity of global coral bleaching events
Each of the four global mass coral-bleaching events since 1998 has been more widespread and severe than the last - from a regional-scale first event to 84% of the world's reef area affected by 2023-25 - tracking the same warming trend as rising ocean heat content, independent of any single El Niño's strength.
A strong La Niña that ran for three winters after the record 1997-98 El Niño, peaking at an ONI of -1.53. It pulled global temperatures back below 1998's record for several years, and brought the usual La Niña pattern of dry winters across the southern United States and wet years in Australia and Indonesia.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips back to a cool phase
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - flips back to its cool phase around 1998-99. The cool phase that followed is one reason global surface warming appeared to slow in the 2000s, as more heat went into the deep Pacific.
A moderate-to-strong El Niño that peaked around the turn of 2009-10. It helped make 2010 one of the warmest years on record at the time, and was followed straight away by the strong La Niña of 2010-12.
The second global-scale coral bleaching event, in 2010, when a moderate-to-strong El Niño pushed tropical sea temperatures above the level corals can tolerate across the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia and the Caribbean.
Globally, heatwave days have roughly doubled each decade since 2010 - from an average of 5.3 a year in the 2000s to 11.5 in the 2010s and 18.9 so far in the 2020s, weighted by land area across 169 countries. El Niño has not become more extreme. The whole temperature distribution has shifted upwards, so the same natural El Niño and La Niña cycle now pushes far more days over fixed extreme-heat thresholds.
A strong double-winter La Niña peaking at an ONI of -1.57. It gave Australia its wettest two years on record and the Queensland floods of 2010-11 - so much rain fell on land that global sea level briefly dropped in 2011 - and it fed drought in the Horn of Africa and in Texas.
Arctic sea ice shrinks to 3.41 million km² in September 2012, the smallest extent of the satellite era, which began in 1979. No year since has gone lower; 2020, at 3.74 million km², came closest.
Atmospheric CO₂ passes 400 ppm at Mauna Loa on 9 May 2013 - a level the planet had not seen for 3-5 million years, since the Pliocene, when sea levels were many metres higher.
The third and (at the time) most severe global bleaching event, spanning 2014-2017 and peaking during the record 2015-16 El Niño - 68.2% of the world's reef area experienced bleaching-level heat stress.
The strongest El Niño on record by raw ONI - though on NOAA's newer RONI index, which strips out background tropical-ocean warming, 1982-83 ranks slightly ahead instead. 2016 became the hottest year on record at that time (+1.0°C above pre-industrial).
The eleven warmest years ever measured are 2015 through 2025, an unbroken run - the longest sustained stretch of record warmth in the 176-year instrumental record. 2023 and 2024 each broke the previous record in turn.
Global fossil CO₂ emissions fell about 5.8% in 2020, from 37.0 to 34.8 billion tonnes, yet atmospheric CO₂ still rose 2.5 ppm - the dip barely registers in the atmospheric record. Emissions were back to pre-pandemic levels by 2022.
New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.
Three consecutive La Niña winters - a 'triple dip', which has happened only a handful of times since 1950 - peaking at an ONI of -1.11. It held global temperatures slightly below where the warming trend would otherwise have put them, and coincided with five failed rainy seasons in a row in the Horn of Africa and severe flooding in eastern Australia in 2022.
An underwater eruption in Tonga that put very little sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere but a record amount of water vapour - about 150 million tonnes. Water vapour traps heat, so it was first expected to warm the planet, but later studies found the small sulphate haze outweighed it: the net effect was a slight cooling of the Southern Hemisphere, around 0.1°C, in 2022-23.
The fourth and most severe global bleaching event on record - bleaching-level heat stress impacted 84% of the world's coral reef area across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, confirmed by NOAA 15 April 2024.
A strong El Niño arriving on top of long-term greenhouse warming, with the cut in shipping sulphur from the 2020 fuel rule adding a little more. Together they produced the record global temperatures of 2023 and 2024.
Ocean acidification crosses its planetary boundary
As of 2025, ocean acidification has crossed its planetary boundary for the first time, making it the seventh of the nine boundaries to be breached. The oceans absorb about a quarter of the CO₂ we emit, which makes seawater more acidic and harder for corals and shell-forming sea life to build with.
Source: NOAA NCEI (temperature, land + ocean); World Bank CCKP / GPCC (precipitation, snow); Berkeley Earth (Day Highs / Night Lows / Land avg, published ~1x/year and currently running to 2023).
The orange line is temperature - how far each year was above or below the long-term average (1901–2000 unless you change the Baseline chip), with a 10-year average through it. Switch on rainfall, frost, snow, sunshine or humidity to plot how unusual each year was for them too, on the second axis, or add global CO₂ and SO₂ to see the two biggest human influences on the record. The Insight buttons add three ways of reading the record...
Night Warming
Day Highs and Night Lows drawn around the average, with the periods when nights warmed faster than days shaded. Available for the world, the UK and the US, where daily maximum and minimum temperatures are published.
Climate Eras
The global record’s phases, from Early Industrial Warming through the Global Dimming Era and Clean Air Unmasking to today’s Accelerated Warming, laid over the place you picked.
Climate History
A sourced list of the heatwaves, droughts, floods, cold winters, eruptions and El Niño years behind the spikes and dips. Filter to local events, search, or scroll the list to move a cursor across the chart.
Annual global temperature anomaly (vs 1961-1990) from 1950 to 2025, with atmospheric CO₂ concentration and global sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emissions where available.
View the Data - Global Temperature, CO₂ and SO₂, Annual76 rows
Global Temperature, CO₂ and SO₂, Annual
Year
Temperature anomaly vs 1961-1990 (°C)
CO₂ (ppm)
SO₂ emissions (Mt)
2025
1
427.4
–
2024
1.14
424.6
–
2023
1.05
421.1
–
2022
0.77
418.5
73.5
2021
0.74
416.4
72.4
2020
0.89
414.2
69.6
2019
0.87
411.7
81.4
2018
0.74
408.7
83.3
2017
0.81
406.8
84.9
2016
0.88
404.4
87.8
2015
0.76
401
91.2
2014
0.61
398.8
96.7
2013
0.54
396.7
101.4
2012
0.51
394.1
106
2011
0.48
391.9
109
2010
0.59
390.1
105.7
2009
0.53
387.6
109.4
2008
0.4
385.8
118.8
2007
0.5
384
122.4
2006
0.51
382.1
123.6
2005
0.54
380
123
2004
0.41
377.7
117.1
2003
0.48
376
111.7
2002
0.47
373.5
107.4
2001
0.41
371.3
108.5
2000
0.28
369.7
107.8
1999
0.28
368.5
108.5
1998
0.49
366.8
114
1997
0.36
363.9
117.2
1996
0.22
362.7
117.5
1995
0.34
361
120.8
1994
0.2
359
123.3
1993
0.14
357.2
126.4
1992
0.11
356.6
128.4
1991
0.29
355.7
132.9
1990
0.3
354.5
135.5
1989
0.14
353.2
134.9
1988
0.26
351.7
135.3
1987
0.21
349.3
134.2
1986
0.1
347.6
131.6
1985
0.02
346.4
132.4
1984
0.05
344.9
131.8
1983
0.2
343.2
130.6
1982
0.03
341.5
132.7
1981
0.21
340.1
135.8
1980
0.16
338.8
140.3
1979
0.07
336.8
141
1978
-0.01
335.4
138.3
1977
0.08
333.8
137.5
1976
-0.18
332
136.6
1975
-0.13
331.1
130.7
1974
-0.17
330.2
132.4
1973
0.05
329.7
134.2
1972
-0.07
327.5
127.9
1971
-0.2
326.3
124.5
1970
-0.08
325.7
124.1
1969
-0.03
324.6
116.5
1968
-0.17
323.1
111.8
1967
-0.13
322.2
106.8
1966
-0.16
321.4
106.1
1965
-0.2
320
103.3
1964
-0.3
319.6
100.4
1963
-0.06
319
95.5
1962
-0.08
318.5
92.3
1961
-0.04
317.6
89.4
1960
-0.13
316.9
88.3
1959
-0.04
316
83.2
1958
-0.03
315.3
79.4
1957
-0.07
–
77.3
1956
-0.29
–
74.9
1955
-0.25
–
70
1954
-0.19
–
64.2
1953
-0.02
–
62.5
1952
-0.08
–
61.5
1951
-0.13
–
59.8
1950
-0.25
–
56.1
Source: NOAA NCEI (temperature); NOAA GML Mauna Loa (CO₂); CEDS (Hoesly et al. 2024) via Our World in Data (SO₂). Download CSV
Methodology & Sources
Temperature - NOAA NCEI (the world, land and ocean); Copernicus ERA5 for countries, with Our World in Data as a fallback; NOAA Climate at a Glance for US states and climate regions; Met Office HadUK-Grid for the UK; a 4byo equal-weight aggregate of member countries for continents.
Day Highs and Night Lows - Berkeley Earth (the world), NOAA (US) and the Met Office (UK).
Rainfall, snow, frost and humidity - GPCC and the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal (ERA5-derived), with NOAA and Met Office series where they exist.
Climate History - a hand-reviewed register in which every event carries its own sources.
Each chart names its exact sources beneath it. Full details on the Methodology & Sources page.
FAQs
Climate Insights - Common Questions
What does the Climate Insights chart show?
Each year since 1950 for the place you pick. Temperature is plotted as an anomaly, how far each year was above or below the long-term average. Rainfall, frost, snow, sunshine and humidity can be switched on alongside it; because they are measured in different units, they are shown as how unusual each year was for that place (in standard deviations) on a second axis, so their ups and downs can be read against temperature's.
Why does the chart start in 1950?
Temperature records for many countries go back much further, but humidity and frost days, both derived from the ERA5 reanalysis, only start in 1950. Starting every place in the same year keeps the lines comparable and the chart consistent from page to page. Earlier history is summarised in the Climate Eras view.
What is the Night Warming view?
Where daily maximum and minimum temperatures are available (the world as a whole, the UK and the US), the chart can show Day Highs and Night Lows separately. The Night Warming view shades the periods when nights warmed faster than days. That was common from the 1960s to the late 1980s, when air pollution dimmed daytime sunshine; in many places days have caught up since, as skies cleared.
What are the Climate Eras?
Six periods that explain the shape of the global temperature record - the Pre-Industrial Baseline, Early Industrial Warming, the Global Dimming Era (when sulphate pollution hid much of the warming), Clean Air Unmasking, Asian Industrialisation and Accelerated Warming. The eras are dated from the global record, so on any single place they show how its own ups and downs line up with those global phases.
Where do the Climate History events come from?
From a hand-reviewed register of sourced events - heatwaves, droughts, floods, cold winters, volcanic eruptions, El Niño and La Niña years and other pattern shifts. Every entry carries its sources and records how it was checked, against this site's own data, a peer-reviewed paper or the public record. Each place shows the events that apply to it, and a Local events filter narrows the list to that place alone. Scrolling the list moves a cursor across the chart.
Which baseline does the chart use?
The chart opens on 1901-2000, NOAA's long-run reference, and the Baseline chip also offers 1961-1990 and 1991-2020. Changing the baseline moves the zero line, not the shape of the record. The three insight views switch to 1961-1990, so their bands, eras and the figures quoted beneath the chart are all measured against the same period.
Can I link to a particular place?
Yes. Picking a place adds it to the page address (for example /climate/insights?region=wales), so the link opens straight to that place. Each place also has its own full climate page, with the same chart alongside its monthly update, rankings and records.
