The Goddard Institute for Space Studies, or GISS
for short, maintains NASA's record of Earth's surface temperature,
called GISTEMP, that shows a clear and unequivocal
increase in our planet's temperature.
GISTEMP stretches from 1880,
long before NASA's existed, until the present day.
Now, when you think of NASA, you
probably think of, well, space, right?
And we do lots of work studying Earth from above.
but the GISTEMP record is actually built from the ground up
We collect measurements
taken from weather stations, Antarctic research stations.
And ships and ocean buoys all around the planet to understand
what temperature changes look like globally.
And why does the record start in 1880?
That's the earliest period that we have sufficiently reliable
measurements from ships and weather stations
in enough places to be confident in the global record.
Interestingly, it's also shortly after the time
we call the Industrial Revolution.
when humans started putting significant amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.