How many degrees global warming

Each value is then used to calculate a global temperature average. This process provides a consistent, reliable method for monitoring changes in Earth's surface temperature over time. Read more about how the global surface temperature record is built in our Climate Data Primer. The month turned out as "only" the eighth warmest December on record.

This animation shows maps of monthly temperatures for January—December compared to the — average, with warm anomalies in red and cool anomalies in blue. The final frame of the animation shows the average. Note that the temperature range on the monthly maps is broader than the range for the annual average plus or minus 9 degrees versus plus or minus 5 degrees. Many parts of Europe and Asia were record warm , including most of France and northern Portugal and Spain, most of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Russia, and southeastern China.

An even larger portion of the globe was much warmer than average, including most of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The heat reached all the way to the Antarctic, where the station at Esperanza Base, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, appeared to set a new all-time record high temperature of Though warming has not been uniform across the planet, the upward trend in the globally averaged temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling.

Based on NOAA's global analysis, the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since , and 7 of the 10 have occurred just since Global Change Research Program. The amount of future warming Earth will experience depends on how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we emit in coming decades. Today, our activities—burning fossil fuels and clearing forests—add about 11 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.

According to the U. Climate Science Special Report , if yearly emissions continue to increase rapidly, as they have since , models project that by the end of this century, global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average, and possibly as much as If annual emissions increase more slowly and begin to decline significantly by , models project temperatures would still be at least 2.

Morice, J. Nicolas, and A. Still, with a focus solely on those 1. A study on extreme heat published around the same time as the U. Numerous areas above the Arctic Circle, including parts of Siberia, also experienced extreme heat waves in the summer. One wildcard when it comes to sea-level rise is ice sheet instability in Antarctica and Greenland. Greenhouse gas emissions are not the only actor here, however: An With a 1.

Across the American West, ecosystems stressed by diminished snowmelt, drought, insect infestations, and wildfire are changing forests from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada.

Ten percent of iconic Giant Sequoia trees died in wildfires in the Sierra Nevada in An ice-free Arctic can lead to accelerated warming as dark blue sea as opposed to white ice absorbs more heat from the sun, through a process known as the albedo effect.

Melting sea ice in the Arctic also injects cold water into the Atlantic south of Greenland, upsetting Atlantic Ocean circulation. Scientists reported in that Atlantic Ocean circulation, which includes the Gulf Stream that brings warm weather to the northeastern U.

Particular populations around the world are especially vulnerable to the consequences of continued warming. But why should we care about one degree of warming? After all, temperatures fluctuate by many degrees every day where we live. The global temperature record represents an average over the entire surface of the planet. The temperatures we experience locally and in short periods can fluctuate significantly due to predictable cyclical events night and day, summer and winter and hard-to-predict wind and precipitation patterns.

But the global temperature mainly depends on how much energy the planet receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back into space—quantities that change very little. The amount of energy radiated by the Earth depends significantly on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, particularly the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much.

In the past, a one- to two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20, years ago.

The maps above show temperature anomalies, or changes, not absolute temperature. They depict how much various regions of the world have warmed or cooled when compared with a base period of In other words, the maps show how much warmer or colder a region is compared to the norm for that region from Global temperature records start around because observations did not sufficiently cover enough of the planet prior to that time.