We’re experiencing more hot days, more hot months, more hot years by Hrushikesh Khopkar

Earth’s average Surface Temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis led by NASA scientists.

Global temperatures in 2024 were 1.28 degrees Celsius above the agency’s 20th-century baseline (1951-1980), which tops the record set in 2023.

The new record comes after 15 consecutive months (June 2023 through August 2024) of monthly temperature records.

The NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) provides a measure of the changing global surface temperature with monthly resolution for the period since 1880. GISTEMP is one of the longest established surface temperature analyses with first estimates made in Hansen et al. (1981). To calculate Earth’s global temperature, NASA scientists gather data from tens of thousands of meteorological stations on land, plus thousands of instruments on ships and buoys on the ocean surface. This raw data is analyzed using methods that account for the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and for urban heating effects that could skew the calculations.

Each point on the radial axis is the monthly global surface temperature anomaly. Anomaly is defined as the deviation from the long term average of 1951-1980. Each ring is thus a year. Years cooler than the long term are inside the yellow baseline ring while years warmer than average are above it.

My aim was to create a visualisation which is impactful as both static and interactive work. I wanted the message to be simple and yet hard hitting. I wanted the work to have journalistic appeal as well as artistic merit. I wanted it to be accurate without any distortions and yet relatable to a lay reader. I wanted it to impact people of all education background, age bracket, attitudes toward climate change. The narrative on the left hand side can tell various stories / interpretations / expert comments while the radial chart in the center will continue to get updated every year as the series gets updated every year.