Climate Change

State of the climate: 2020 ties as warmest year on record

There were record lows in sea ice in Arctic between July and November. Image: REUTERS/Natalie Thomas

Zeke Hausfather

US Analyst, Carbon Brief

Share:
Our Impact
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Climate Change is affecting economies, industries and global issues
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:

Climate Change

Have you read?
Global average surface temperatures for each year
Global average surface temperatures for each year relative preindustrial with their respective uncertainties (width of the curves) from Berkeley Earth. Note that warming is shown here relative to the temperature to the 1850-1900 period. Image: Dr Robert Rohde
surface temperature anomalies shown on a global map
Surface temperature anomalies for 2020 from Berkeley Earth. Note that Berkeley uses a 1951-1980 baseline to calculate anomalies. Image: Berkeley Earth
annual average temperature rankings as shown on a global map
Regions of the world among the five warmest (reds) of five coolest (blues) on record for average annual temperatures in 2020. Figure from Berkeley Earth. Image: Berkeley Earth
a chart showing the increase of ice free conditions in the arctic ocean
Ice free conditions have become more common. Image: Carbon Brief
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.

Related topics:
Climate ChangeFuture of the EnvironmentESG
Share:
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

More on Climate Change
See all

Counting the cost of natural disasters, plus the other climate-crisis stories you need to read this week

Stefan Ellerbeck

January 30, 2023

1:39
What Is a ‘Polycrisis’ and How Do We Get Out of It?
About Us
Events
Media
More from the Forum
Partners & Members
Language Editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

© 2023 World Economic Forum