About
About Climate Now
Climate Now is a free, plain-English guide to climate change, built around live data from the scientific agencies that measure it. Every number comes from an original public record, every chart says where it came from, and the site refreshes itself as new data is published. No ads, no sign-up, no cookies, no tracking.
Data sources
Where the numbers come from
Daily global temperature
Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) / ECMWF, ERA5 reanalysis via Climate Pulse. Daily global mean 2 m air temperature since 1940 and its anomaly against 1991–2020. The latest two to five days are preliminary. Checked every 6 hours.
Yearly global temperature since 1850
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAAGlobalTemp. Annual and year-to-date global land and ocean anomalies, used for the warming stripes and yearly bars. Checked daily.
Monthly global temperature since 1880
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISTEMP v4. Monthly land-ocean anomalies, used for the climate spiral. Checked daily.
Carbon dioxide
NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Mauna Loa Observatory. Daily and monthly mean CO₂ (the Keeling curve, begun by Scripps in 1958). Checked every 12 hours.
Methane and nitrous oxide
NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, global marine surface network. Monthly global means; NOAA publishes these with a delay of a few months. Checked daily.
Sea ice
National Snow and Ice Data Center, Sea Ice Index v4 (G02135). Daily Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent since 1978 and the 1981–2010 climatology. Checked every 12 hours.
Sea level
NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry. Global mean sea level from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1/2/3 and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, seasonal signal removed. NOAA updates this file a few times a year. Altimetry data are provided by NOAA LSA.
Emissions and electricity by country
Global Carbon Budget (Global Carbon Project) and Ember, via Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). Annual territorial CO₂ from fossil fuels and industry, per capita, cumulative, and the electricity mix. Checked weekly.
Reference figures
cited inlineExplainer facts come from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021–2023), the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C (2018), Indicators of Global Climate Change (Forster et al.), Climate Watch via Our World in Data, and peer-reviewed studies named next to each figure. Map shapes: Natural Earth (public domain). Warming stripes concept: Ed Hawkins, University of Reading.
Methods & baselines
How to read the numbers
"Pre-industrial" means the 1850–1900 average, the baseline the IPCC and the Paris Agreement use. Datasets publish anomalies against different periods, so we convert:
ERA5 anomalies are published against 1991–2020; we add 0.88°C, Copernicus's own estimate of how much warmer 1991–2020 was than 1850–1900. NOAA's yearly series (relative to the 20th century) is rebased so that its own 1850–1900 average is zero. NASA's GISTEMP series starts in 1880, so the spiral uses 1880–1900 as its starting point.
Datasets disagree by a tenth or two. ERA5, NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth and HadCRUT handle the poles, sea ice and sparse early records differently. ERA5 usually runs a little warmer than NOAA. Each chart names its dataset, so compare like with like.
Single days and years are not the Paris limit. The 1.5°C goal refers to a 20-year average. A year above 1.5°C is a warning, not a breach.
Records "for the date" compare one calendar day with the same day in every other year of the record (1940 onwards for temperature, 1979 onwards for sea ice).
Country emissions are territorial CO₂ from fossil fuels and industry (cement, flaring), excluding land use and other greenhouse gases, and don't include emissions embedded in imported goods.
Free JSON API
Use the live numbers
One endpoint with today's headline readings. Free to use with a link back and credit to the original agencies. Please cache it: it changes a few times a day at most.
GET https://climate.xvn.app/api/vitals.json
{
"temperature": { "date": "2026-10-17", "global_mean_c": 15.303, "anomaly_vs_preindustrial_c": 1.774, … },
"co2": { "date": "2026-10-18", "ppm": 426.67, … },
"methane": { … }, "nitrous_oxide": { … },
"arctic_sea_ice": { … }, "antarctic_sea_ice": { … }, "sea_level": { … }
}Privacy
Nothing to track
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Questions people ask
How much has the Earth warmed?
About 1.3 to 1.5°C since the late 1800s, and the last few years have been the hottest on record. So far in 2026 the planet has averaged +1.51°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial baseline (Copernicus ERA5). Over the last ten years NOAA's record averages +1.17°C. 2024 was the first calendar year above 1.5°C.
Is climate change caused by humans?
Yes. The IPCC says it is "unequivocal" that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Burning coal, oil and gas releases carbon dioxide that traps heat. Natural factors like the Sun and volcanoes would on their own have caused almost no warming, or slight cooling, since 1950.
What is the CO₂ level today?
The latest daily reading at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, is 426.7 ppm. Before the industrial revolution it was about 280 ppm, and it hasn't been this high in at least 800,000 years. It rises by roughly 2 to 3 ppm every year.
What does 1.5°C mean?
It's the Paris Agreement's target: hold long-term warming (a 20-year average) to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst impacts. A single year above 1.5°C doesn't mean the target is lost, but at today's pace the 20-year average will cross it around 2030.
How often is this data updated?
Automatically. Daily temperature, CO₂ and sea ice refresh several times a day as the agencies publish; monthly and yearly records refresh within a day of release. Each chart shows its source and when it was last checked.