Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Earth has experienced big swings in average global temperature over the past 485 million years, including "hothouse" periods of extreme warmth. The most recent episode of very high temperatures was the geologically brief period known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 56 million years ago. Read more in our Q&A: What's the hottest Earth's ever been? climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been
Video produced by the Climate.gov team, adapted from original figure in Judd, E. J., Tierney, J. E., Lunt, D. J., Montañez, I. P., Huber, B. T., Wing, S. L., & Valdes, P. J. (2024). A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature. Science, 385(6715), eadk3705. doi.org/10.1126/science.adk3705
Earth has experienced big swings in average global temperature over the past 485 million years, including "hothouse" periods of extreme warmth. The most recent episode of very high temperatures was the geologically brief period known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 56 million years ago. Read more in our Q&A: What's the hottest Earth's ever been? climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been
Video produced by the Climate.gov team, adapted from original figure in Judd, E. J., Tierney, J. E., Lunt, D. J., Montañez, I. P., Huber, B. T., Wing, S. L., & Valdes, P. J. (2024). A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature. Science, 385(6715), eadk3705. doi.org/10.1126/science.adk3705
