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Climate Change

How are global temperatures changing, and what are the impacts on sea level rise, sea ice, and ice sheets?

By: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Veronika Samborska

Current climate change is primarily caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. This warming can drive large changes in sea level, sea ice and glacier balances, rainfall patterns, and extreme temperatures. This has potentially devastating impacts on human health, farming systems, the stability of societies, and other species.

To limit and stop climate change, we need to greatly reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. We cover these emissions in our work on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. This will require massive shifts in our energy and food systems, which we also cover in detail.

On this page, you will find global data and research on the impacts of climate change, including temperature anomalies, sea level rise, sea ice melt, glacier loss, and ocean acidification.

See all of our interactive charts on climate change ↓

Research & Writing

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More people care about climate change than you think

The majority of people in every country support action on climate, but the public consistently underestimates this share.

Hannah Ritchie

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How much have temperatures risen in countries across the world?

Explore country-by-country data on monthly temperature anomalies.

Veronika Samborska

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How much CO2 can the world emit while keeping warming below 1.5°C and 2°C?

The budget to keep temperatures below 1.5°C is less than a decade of current emissions. For 2°C, it’s less than three decades.

Hannah Ritchie

Related work on climate change and its impacts

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Our World in Data

COâ‚‚ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser

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Energy

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser

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Wildfires

Veronika Samborska and Hannah Ritchie

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Natural Disasters

Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado

Interactive charts on climate change

Global temperature anomalies by month
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Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Veronika Samborska (2024) - “Climate Change” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-climate-change,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado and Veronika Samborska},
    title = {Climate Change},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2024},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change}
}
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