Those of us in London and New York who are currently wearing T-shirts while we do our Christmas shopping will not be surprised that 2015 is "virtually certain" to go down as the warmest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks climate data.
In fact, it is so hot that even climate change denial blogs are publishing data showing the temperature is rising.
But before we get to the sceptics, here is the new data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. (It is well worth clicking through to the full page if you want to see all the charts.) Here are some highlights.
Temperature anomalies since 1880 show Earth getting hotter.
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b4749-658-474/fig.a2.png)
NASA GISS
NASA GISS surveys data from a number of different points and cuts it in a number of different ways.
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474a-656-446/fig.a.png)
NASA GISS
Here is the surface temperature.
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474b-647-417/fig c.png)
NASA GISS
Here is the difference between the two hemispheres - it's worse in the North.
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474c-625-474/fig.a3.png)
NASA GISS
The temperature increase is pronounced in the US, where the largest number of climate deniers live (ironically).
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474d-1000-834/fig d.png)
NASA GISS
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474d-1000-834/fig d.png)
NASA GISS
And in case you think this is all a conspiracy by the Western liberal science elite, new data from Japan's Meteorological Agency shows the same thing.
![global warming](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56740a52dd089529598b474e-729-541/novjma.png)
NASA GISS
I was curious to see what climate changed deniers made of all this.
So I went over to WattsUpWithThat, a climate-change denier site that gets 820,000 visitors a month, according to Similar Web, and claims to be "the world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change." To his credit, WUWT's November update republishes the same data from NASA. But despite all those upward-pointing lines, it won't admit that global warming is happening.
WUWT has (at least) three criticisms against the data:
1. "It is easy to have record high global temperatures in the midst of a hiatus or slowdown in global warming." Even if you accept that argument, it's still based on the premise that temperatures are going up.
2. The observed data is turning out to be different from the predictive models. WUWT shows this chart to illustrate the difference between the incoming data and the models. Sure, the lines diverge. But the temperature is still going up:
3. Global temperature changes should be shown in absolute temperatures rather than high or low anomalies, which NASA GISS uses. WUWT has an interesting discussion about why the data is presented using only anomalies, and again, to its credit, the site admits that because geographies range over different altitudes, and because many areas have lousy measurement stations (ie the Sahara), if you want to detect changes and differences in temperature you need to take averages of the anomalies. The site also does us a huge service by recalculating the anomaly data into absolute temperatures. And guess, what? It looks like this:
That is a chart from a group of climate change sceptics. And it shows global warming.