How much warmer the Earth has got, and why the Arctic warms fastest.
🌍 Play this lesson on the globe
You might have heard on the news about “the hottest year on record”. That was 2024. To know, scientists measure the temperature all over the world, every day.
NASA compares each place with how warm it usually was there from 1951 to 1980, around when your grandparents were young. Red means warmer than that, and blue means cooler. This map is the 1960s, so it’s almost all clear.
Tap the buttons to travel through time. Every map is real, made by NASA from thermometers all over the world. Watch the red spread.
Look at the land: it is redder than most of the sea. Water warms up slowly, like a swimming pool that stays cool on a hot day. Land warms up much faster.
Now look at the top of the world, around the North Pole. The Arctic has warmed more than twice as much as the world as a whole. It’s the reddest part of the map.
Snow and sea ice are white, so they bounce sunlight back to space. When the ice melts, the dark sea underneath soaks up the sunshine and warms up. That melts even more ice. It’s a feedback.
Burning coal, oil and gas for power, cars and planes gives off carbon dioxide. It works like a blanket round the Earth, keeping in heat that would have gone out to space. Because scientists know the main cause, we know how to slow it down: burn less.
The map is off. Can you remember?
🌍 Play this lesson on the globe
The globe pictures are simplified to show the idea. Earth images: NASA Blue Marble (public domain).