Another record hot year

I’ve been charting the NASA Land-Ocean Temperature Index data for many years, as charts can get across trends very clearly. I’ve updated the data to include 2024.

It is reasonable to debate what is the best policy response to global warming. It is also reasonable to debate how significant a problem this will be in future.

It is not reasonable to deny that global warming is happening, and very rapidly. Normally large temperatures changes occur over centuries, not decades.

This is the annual mean temperature. There is of course variation from year to year due to normal weather patterns, but the trend since 1975 is very clear.

If you look at the average for every half decade, then you see a much smoother trend.

Since 1965 every half decade has been warmer than the previous one.

The decade averages are even clearer.