Changes in the global mean air temperature over land since 1980

Changes in frequency of record-breaking land surface temperature over Earth's since 1980 are assessed here using six different gridded datasets comprising monthly mean air temperature and weather station data retrieved from Global Historical Climatology Network and NOAA Global Summary of the Day. The 2010–2020 decade was the warmest in the history of modern measurements for more than one third of the Earth surface, i.e., Europe, United States, southern Africa, northern Siberia and most of Australia, according to four different datasets. Since 1980, new high/maximum temperature records have been observed in most parts of Europe, eastern Asia and the eastern of North America. 2020 was the warmest year recorded, while 2010 was the hottest year for parts of North America (≈34% of the territory). Approximately 60% of the Earth's land surface recorded a new maximum annual mean temperature after 2010. In terms of datasets comparison, ERA5 came the closest to the weather stations data regarding the hottest year ever recorded at various locations while Berkeley Earth and ERA5 indicated the highest correlations for the total number of record-breaking temperature events.