[OC] 146 Years of Global Warming: Every year's temperature since 1880, colored by anomaly. 2025, 2024, and 2023 are the three warmest years in NASA's entire record. Visualization

What This Visualization Shows

This data visualization displays "[OC] 146 Years of Global Warming: Every year's temperature since 1880, colored by anomaly. 2025, 2024, and 2023 are the three warmest years in NASA's entire record." and provides a clear visual representation of the underlying data patterns and trends. The visualization focuses on Source & Methodology

• Data: NASA GISTEMP v4 — downloaded directly from data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp on 2026-03-03

• Baseline: Anomalies are relative to the 1951–1980 global average (NASA's standard baseline)

• Tool: Python (matplotlib + pandas), run in Google Colab.

• Key context from NASA press releases:

2024: +1.28°C — warmest year on record (NASA, Jan 10, 2025)

2025: +1.19°C — effectively tied with 2023 as 2nd warmest (NASA, Jan 14, 2026)

2024's record followed 15 consecutive months of monthly temperature records (Jun 2023–Aug 2024)

• 1.5°C threshold line note: The dashed red line shows ≈1.5°C above pre-industrial (1850–1900). Converting between baselines is approximate — NASA's FAQ (as of Jan 2025) says you can add \~0.19°C to a GISTEMP anomaly to approximate the anomaly relative to 1850–1900. So 1.5°C pre-industrial ≈ 1.31°C in GISTEMP units. This conversion may shift slightly as methodology evolves.

• Paris Agreement: Adopted Dec 12, 2015 at COP21; entered into force Nov 4, 2016. Annotated at 2015.

• Top 3 warmest years are computed dynamically from the dataset — not hardcoded. If NASA revises the data, the chart updates automatically.

• Citation: GISTEMP Team, 2025: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP), version 4. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Lenssen et al. (2024), J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 129(17), e2023JD040179., which allows us to understand complex relationships and insights within the data through visual storytelling.

Deep Dive into the Topic

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