Global monthly temperature anomaly
What you should know about this indicator
- Temperature anomalies show how many degrees Celsius temperatures have changed compared to the 1880-1900 period.
- While a 1861–1890 baseline period is commonly used to highlight the changes in temperature since pre-industrial times, here we use 1880–1900 instead, as monthly data on temperature anomalies in this dataset is only available from 1880.
- Temperature averages and anomalies are calculated over all land and ocean surfaces.
- The data includes separate measurements for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, which helps researchers analyze regional differences.
- This data is based on the GISS method which estimates temperatures in areas without data by using information from nearby locations within 1200 kilometers. This is especially useful in the Arctic and Antarctic, where measurements are sparse.
- Despite different approaches, GISS and other methods show similar global temperature trends.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
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- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Global monthly temperature anomaly”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Veronika Samborska (2024) - “Climate Change”. Data adapted from NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Retrieved from https://wdi-citations.owid.pages.dev/grapher/global-monthly-temp-anomaly [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (2025) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Global monthly temperature anomaly” [dataset]. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “GISS Surface Temperature Analysis v4” [original data]. Retrieved March 12, 2025 from https://wdi-citations.owid.pages.dev/grapher/global-monthly-temp-anomaly