Since the 1980s, satellites and reanalysis models have let scientists track how surface temperature is changing, not just on average, but region by region. This animation shows the linear trend in 2-metre air temperature (ERA5 reanalysis, 1979-2025) across the globe, in K/decade. The surface is both colored and deformed by the trend: it bulges outward where warming is fastest, and dips inward in the rare pockets that have cooled. To be clear, this is a visualization device, not a physical measurement. Unlike gravity-anomaly globes, where the deformation is the real physical quantity, here the bulge is a stylistic amplification of the color, meant to make an otherwise subtle pattern impossible to miss.

What it reveals is Arctic amplification in its starkest form: the far north is warming several times faster than the global average, while the Southern Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic have barely warmed, or even cooled slightly, over the same 46 years.

Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)