Evaluating the annual global temperatures each year requires context. There is a fair amount of natural variability from one year to the next, so it’s important to focus on the trend over time. Famously, global warming did not end in 1998, as some claimed a couple of decades ago—we just had a run of La-Niña-dominated years after a very strong El Niño.
Annual greenhouse gas emissions are much less variable, having increased fairly steadily, but many complicating factors can still muddy the picture. Sometimes those factors conspire to throw a year off the trend. It looks like 2026 will be one of those years.
