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Photos show a climate change crisis unfolding—and hope for the future

Melting ice, wildfires, heat waves, floods: These images show life in a warming world, and solutions to address it.

As the UN’s global climate change conference—COP26—approaches, ever-more-extreme weather has shown us climate change is here. Yet COVID-19 and the actions taken to control it have also shown us that cooperation can prompt dramatic global change.

Sometimes, all it takes is one photo to spark that action. Sometimes, it's a collection of vignettes that show us what is at stake, and more importantly, inspire ideas of what we can do about it. In short, pictures can change the world. And as our world comes to terms with the reality of climate change, never has that been more needed.

Some of these images offer an instant visual punch to the gut: a dying coral outcrop on the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, juxtaposed with an older photo of how vibrant coral can be. Some of the images inspire in their ability to show that change is not only possible, it is happening—and that we have the ingenuity and the skill to make a real difference.  

But amidst these odds, there is hope. Nature is resilient, and given the chance, it can recover, if we have the courage to make it happen.

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• CLIMATE CHANGE
• CLIMATOLOGY
• SEA LEVEL CHANGE
• FIRE FIGHTING

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Global Warming Presentation templates

Our planet is experiencing an increase in temperatures like no other. and it's not a natural process: it's something caused by humans. due to global warming, many icebergs are melting, raising the water level, which poses a danger to many coastal towns. let's take action prepare presentations with these google slides & powerpoint templates and start raising awareness.

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2021 Continued Earth’s Warming Trend

Earth’s global average surface temperature in 2021 tied 2018 as the sixth-warmest year on record, according to independent analyses from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Global temperatures in 2021 were 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for NASA’s baseline period, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). NASA uses the period from 1951-1980 as a baseline to compare how global temperatures change over time.

Collectively, the past eight years have been the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. This annual temperature data is part of the global temperature record that tells scientists how much and where our planet has been warming. Earth in 2021 was about 1.1°C (1.9°F) warmer than it was in the late 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution was underway and weather stations were popping up around the world.

The map above depicts global temperature anomalies in 2021. It does not show absolute temperatures; instead, it shows how much warmer or cooler each region of Earth was compared to the average from 1951 to 1980. The bar chart below shows 2021 in the context of the past 140 years. The values represent surface temperatures averaged over the entire globe for the year.

1880 - 2021

The long-term global warming trend is largely due to human activities that have increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The planet is already seeing the effects of global warming: Arctic sea ice is declining, sea levels are rising, and wildfires are becoming more severe. Understanding how the planet is changing—and how rapidly those changes are occurring—is crucial for preparing humanity to adapt to a warmer future.

NASA’s temperature analyses incorporate surface temperature measurements from more than 20,000 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and temperature measurements from Antarctic research stations. These in situ , ground-based measurements are validated with satellite data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The data are also analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heat island effects. The full dataset of global surface temperatures for 2021, as well as details of how NASA scientists conducted the analysis, are publicly available from GISS.

A separate, independent analysis by NOAA also concluded that the global surface temperature for 2021 was the sixth highest on record. NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis, but they have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology.

“The complexity of the various analyses does not matter because the signals are so strong,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS, NASA’s leading center for climate modeling and climate change research. “The trends are all the same because the trends are so large.”

Many factors affect the average temperature in any given year, including La Niña and El Niño climate patterns in the tropical Pacific. 2021 was a La Niña year, and NASA scientists estimate that those ocean conditions may have cooled global temperatures by about 0.03°C (0.06°F) from what the average might have been.

“Science leaves no room for doubt: Climate change is the existential threat of our time,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Eight of the top 10 warmest years on our planet occurred in the last decade, an indisputable fact that underscores the need for bold action to safeguard the future of our country and all of humanity.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens , based on data from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies . Story by Sofie Bates, NASA’s Earth Science News Team, with Michael Carlowicz .

The past eight years have been the warmest in the global record.

Image of the Day for January 14, 2022

Image of the Day Atmosphere Heat Land Water Human Presence Remote Sensing Temperature Extremes

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Annual Global Temperature Records

Scientists at NASA report each year on the long-term trend of rising air temperatures over Earth’s land and sea surfaces. The team assembles its analysis with publicly available data from roughly 6,300 meteorological stations, ship and buoy-based observations, and Antarctic research stations.

References & Resources

• NASA (2022, January 13) Six Questions to Help You Understand the 6th Warmest Year on Record. Accessed January 13, 2022.
• NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (2022) GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). Accessed January 13, 2022.
• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (2022, January 13) Assessing the Global Climate in 2021. Accessed January 13, 2022.
• NOAA (2022, January 13) 2021 was world’s 6th-warmest year on record. Accessed January 13, 2022.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2022) World of Change: Global Temperatures.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2018, October 19) The New UN Climate Report in One Sentence.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2015, January 21) Why So Many Global Temperature Records?
• NASA Earth Observatory (2010, June 3) Global Warming.

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2017 was the second hottest year on record.

Globally averaged temperatures were 0.90 degrees Celsius (1.62 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the long-term mean.

Image of the Day Heat Human Presence Temperature Extremes

2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record

Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 1.2°C (2°F) since the late 19th century.

Image of the Day Atmosphere Heat Remote Sensing Temperature Extremes

Global Temperature Record Broken for Third Consecutive Year

The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 1.1°C (2.0°F) since the late 19th century.

Image of the Day Heat Temperature Extremes

2009 Ends Warmest Decade on Record

These maps illustrate just how much warmer temperatures were in 2009 and the decade (2000-2009) compared to average temperatures recorded between 1951 and 1980.

Image of the Day Atmosphere Heat

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Explaining climate science, impacts, and adaptation through maps, graphs, and other data visualizations.

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2023 was the warmest year in the modern temperature record

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Antarctic ozone hole yearly maximum extent 12th-largest on record

November 1, 2023

Historically, how has El Niño influenced summer temperature and precipitation around the world?

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Past and future temperatures in the United States' hottest month of the year

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Ocean warming since 1991 doubles the size of the marine heat wave forecasted for September 2023

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Watch La Niña fade and El Niño approach in the tropical Pacific Ocean in 2023

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Early snowmelt across Arctic in 2022 continues long-term pattern

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As sea ice retreats, more ship traffic is entering the Arctic high seas

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

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Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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Video: Global Warming from 1880 to 2022

January 12, 2023

Earth's average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, global temperatures in 2022 were 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.89 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA's baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported.

The past nine years have been the warmest years since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. This means Earth in 2022 was about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.11 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 19th century average.

Full story: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3246/nasa-says-2022-fifth-warmest-year-on-record-warming-trend-continues/

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Nov 30, 2023

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• U.S. Department of Transportation - Global Warming: A Science Overview
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Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.

Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.

Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.

Recent News

global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .

Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.

AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.

Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.

The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.

The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.

Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.

A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .