

GISS is a NASA laboratory managed by the Earth Sciences Division of the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Celsius calculation full#
NASA’s full temperature data set and the complete methodology used for the temperature calculation and its uncertainties are available online. “And it will get worse if we continue to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.” Things that we said would come to pass are coming to pass,” said Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist and director of GISS. “Unfortunately, climate change is happening. Southwest and drought to countries in the western Pacific, such as Indonesia and Australia. The phenomenon can have widespread effects, often bringing cooler, wetter conditions to the U.S. El Niño is associated with the weakening of easterly trade winds and the movement of warm water from the western Pacific toward the western coast of the Americas.

Willis and other scientists expect to see the biggest impacts of El Niño in February, March, and April 2024. The atmosphere can also hold more water now, and when it’s hot and humid, it’s even harder for the human body to regulate its temperature.” “The heat waves that we experience now are longer, they’re hotter, and they’re more punishing. “With background warming and marine heat waves that have been creeping up on us for decades, this El Niño shot us over the hump for setting all kinds of records,” Willis said. At the same time, natural El Niño events in the Pacific pump extra warmth into the global atmosphere and often correlate with the warmest years on record. Scientific observations and analyses made over decades by NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other international institutions have shown this warming has been driven primarily by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The record-setting summer of 2023 continues a long-term trend of warming. “Exceptionally high sea surface temperatures, fueled in part by the return of El Niño, were largely responsible for the summer’s record warmth,” said Josh Willis, climate scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.Įl Niño is a natural climate phenomenon characterized by warmer than normal sea surface temperatures (and higher sea levels) in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. A temperature anomaly shows how far the temperature has departed from the 1951 to 1980 base average. The analysis calculates temperature anomalies rather than absolute temperature. 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. NASA assembles its temperature record, known as GISTEMP, from surface air temperature data acquired by tens of thousands of meteorological stations, as well as sea surface temperature data from ship- and buoy-based instruments. “The impacts of climate change are a threat to our planet and future generations, threats that NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration are tackling head on.” From sweltering temperatures in Arizona and across the country, to wildfires across Canada, and extreme flooding in Europe and Asia, extreme weather is threatening lives and livelihoods around the world,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“Summer 2023’s record-setting temperatures aren’t just a set of numbers – they result in dire real-world consequences. Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin The warmer-than-usual summer in 2023 continues a long-term trend of warming, driven primarily by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This chart shows the meteorological summer (June, July, and August) temperature anomalies each year since 1880.
