2020 set to be first or second warmest year on record

Aug 6, 2020

Boats of fishermen are seen on the dried Poopo lakebed in the Oruro Department, south of La Paz, Bolivia, December 17, 2015. Lake Poopo in Bolivia, the Andean nation's formerly second largest after the famed Titicaca, has dried up entirely. With the water now gone, animals have died off in the millions, according to studies. And the local families, having lost much of their sustenance, have been forced to migrate. REUTERS/David Mercado TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - GF10000269917

Scientists have concluded that this year's extreme heat would've been almost impossible without human-caused global warming. Image: REUTERS/David Mercado

Zeke Hausfather

US Analyst, Carbon Brief

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Climate Change is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Climate Change

Have you read?

environment renewable solar energy change transition friendly environment carbon footprint carbon emissions reduction change natural climate change global warming air pollution clean energy power renewables plastic plastics Weather extreme storm hurricane typhoon flooding flood floods danger rain wind windy rainy flash floods Agriculture pollen insects bugs bees honeybees bumblebees farming farms crops crop stable

Rankings of 2020 temperatures by month across different datasets. Image: Carbon Brief

Average surface temperatures over the first six months of 2020 (January through June) from Berkeley Earth. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Image: Carbon Brief

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecast models for three-month periods in the Niño3.4 region (March, April, May – MAM – and so on). Image: CPC/IRI ENSO

Estimated probabilities of 2020’s temperature rank for each dataset, with the most likely outcome in bold. Note that these probabilities do not include measurement uncertainty for each record, just the best estimate. Image: Carbon Brief

Regions of the world with record warm temperatures (or record cold, if any were available) during the first six months of 2020. Image: Berkeley Earth

Siberia temperatures from 1850 through present, along with uncertainties (grey vertical lines). Image: Berkeley Earth

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.