The world has not had a single cooler-than-normal day since December 2022

Since December 2022, the world has experienced 1,425 consecutive days without a single cooler-than-normal day, marking the longest such streak in over 80 years of records, according to a JoyNews Research analysis of global temperature data. The last cooler-than-normal day occurred on December 1, 2022, with a temperature difference of just 0.006°C below normal, which is far too small to feel.

Every day from December 2, 2022, to October 26, 2026, has been warmer than normal for its respective date. This run is nearly 50% longer than the previous record of 959 days, which occurred between June 2015 and February 2018. The data for this analysis was sourced from ERA5, a day-by-day record of the world's weather produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Researchers analyzed each day from January 1, 1940, to October 26, 2026, totaling 31,711 days. "Normal" temperature conditions are determined as the average over a 30-year period. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) adopted 1991-2020 as the current global standard and recommends updating it every ten years. In this analysis, a day is considered "cooler than normal" if the global average temperature on that day was below the 1991-2020 average for the same date.

Despite cooler-than-normal days being expected to occur approximately 50.6% of the time in a 30-year average, there has not been one since December 2022. This marks a significant departure from the norm, as the world has endured a record-breaking stretch of warmer-than-normal days.