Climate Central compares temperatures to an earlier 1880-1910 baseline to assess warming during the industrial era. Calculations of average annual global temperature are performed independently at NASA and NOAA. Small differences in their calculations arise as NASA’s calculations are extrapolated to account for polar locations with poor station coverage, while NOAA relies more heavily on the polar station data. The 2016 Paris Agreement set a commitment to keep the global average temperature well below 2°C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels. In order to examine 2019 global temperatures in the context of this goal, they compare them to an earlier 1880-1910 baseline. While it’s important to note that a warming world will have year-to-year variations due to natural variability (so not every year will be warmer than the one before) 2019 was 1.22°C (2.19°F) above the pre-industrial baseline temperature.
