The warming record.
NASA has reconstructed the planet's surface temperature for every month since 1880 — one number per month, anomalies against the 1951–1980 mean. This report reads all — of them and finds a record with no suspense left in it: 1976 was the last year the planet came in below that baseline. Every year since — — straight — has been warmer, the three hottest years in the whole record are the last three, and each of the last seven decades has been warmer than the decade before it. Every figure is computed from the record at render time.
published 2026-08-27 · data cutoff 2026-07 (latest complete month) · edition 1 — updated only by a new dated edition · source: NASA GISS GISTEMP v4
A hundred forty-six years, one glance.
One stripe per year, 1880 to 2025: blue below the 1951–1980 baseline, red above, deeper color for a larger anomaly. No axis is needed — the picture is the finding. The blue era ends in the 1970s; the deep-red era is the one you are living in.
Seven decades, each warmer than the last.
The annual record with its decade means drawn as steps. Since the 1950s, every completed decade has been warmer than the one before it — seven steps up, no step down. The line wobbles year to year (volcanoes, El Niño); the staircase does not.
Seventeen hundred months, twelve rows.
Every month since 1880 in one field — January to December down, the years across, the same blue-to-red scale as the stripes. The record's hottest single month against its baseline is September 2023, at +1.48°C — and the deep-red column of 2023–2025 is the most abnormal stretch in the whole field.
Where every number comes from.
One series, taken whole. The GISTEMP v4 Land-Ocean Temperature Index, published by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies: monthly global-mean surface temperature anomalies from January 1880, expressed against the 1951–1980 mean. This report fetched the published CSV on 2026-08-27 and computes every figure from it in the browser.
What an anomaly is. Not a temperature — a difference from a baseline. The baseline (1951–1980) is NASA's, not ours; "below the average" on this page always means below that stated baseline.
Annual means are the published January–December means (the J–D column), not recomputed. Decade means are simple means of the published annual values; the 2020s step is partial (2020–2025) and is labeled as such wherever it appears.
What this page does not do. No trend fitting, no attribution, no projection. The record's own arithmetic — streaks, ranks, steps — is the entire method. Why the planet warms is the subject of a literature this page cites by pointing at its source, not by summarizing it.