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

The world has gone 1,425 days in a row without a single day that was cooler than normal, the longest such run in more than 80 years of records, a JoyNews Research analysis of global temperature data shows.

The last time the planet’s average temperature dipped below normal was 1 December 2022, and even then only by 0.006°C, a difference far too small to feel. Every day since, from 2 December 2022 to 26 October 2026, has been warmer than normal for its date.

The run is almost 50% longer than the previous record of 959 days, set between June 2015 and February 2018.

The figures come 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. JoyNews Research analysed every day from 1 January 1940 to 26 October 2026, a total of 31,711 days.

What counts as “normal”?

Weather experts measure “normal” as the average over 30 years. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations’ weather agency, adopted 1991 to 2020 as the current global standard and recommends updating it every ten years.

In this analysis, a day is “cooler than normal” if the world’s average temperature on that day was below the 1991–2020 average for the same date. A day in October is compared with other Octobers, not with August.

By design, cooler-than-normal days should be common. In the 30 years that make up the average, about half of all days (50.6%) were below it. For nearly four years now, there has not been one.

Figure 1: Every day since 2010 compared with normal. Red shows warmer-than-normal days and blue shows cooler-than-normal days. The last blue day was 1 December 2022.

A record by a wide margin

Long runs of warmer-than-normal days are not new. The five longest on record have all happened since 2015. But none comes close to the current one.

The previous longest lasted 959 days, from 20 June 2015 to 2 February 2018. It ended with a single day just 0.05°C below normal. Another, from August 2018 to February 2021, lasted 902 days.

Since the middle of 2015, the world has had only 13 cooler-than-normal days in total, and all were by small margins. The deepest was 17 February 2021, at about 0.2°C below normal.

Figure 2: The five longest unbroken runs of warmer-than-normal days since 1940. All five have happened since 2015.

The closest the world has come

The nearest the planet came to ending the run was 14 January 2023, when global temperature was just 0.08°C above normal.

Since February 2023, the gap has never been that small: every day has been at least 0.12°C above normal. In 2026, the coolest day relative to normal was 23 February, and it was still 0.18°C warmer than usual. On average, 2026 has run 0.64°C above normal.

Read also: 2026 set to be the world’s second-hottest year on record as El Niño drives August to an all-time high

How the world got here

A cooler-than-normal day used to be the rule, not the exception.

Between 1940 and 1979, only 7 of 14,610 days were warmer than what we now call normal. In other words, more than 99.9% of days in those four decades would count as cooler than normal today.

The change came steadily. In the 1990s, 88% of days were still cooler than normal. In the 2000s, it was 56%. In the 2010s,s it fell to 16%. So far in the 2020s, it is 0.4%: just ten days, and none since December 2022.

1998 was the first year in the record in which fewer than half of all days were cooler than normal.

Figure 3: The share of days in each decade that were cooler than the 1991–2020 average for their date.

A run that began under a cooling influence

The run began while a natural cooling pattern was still in place. La Niña, which occurs when the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the equator turns unusually cool, tends to pull global temperatures down. A rare three-year La Niña was underway in December 2022. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared it over on 9 March 2023.

Its opposite, El Niño, then took over and helped drive 2023 and 2024 to back-to-back global temperature records.

Another El Niño is now underway. NOAA said on 8 October that a key Pacific temperature index stood at 2.1°C above normal and gave a more than 83% chance of a strong to very strong El Niño lasting into early 2027.

Measured against older “normals,” the run is even longer.

Because the reference period moves forward every ten years, “normal” itself is getting warmer. Compared with the previous standard, 1981 to 2010, the world’s last cooler-than-normal day was 4 March 2014, more than 12 years ago.

When the WMO moves to the next reference period, the bar is expected to rise again. The run of warmer-than-normal days would then look shorter on paper, even though the world itself would not be any cooler.

What it means for Ghana

These are global averages and do not describe conditions in any single country. But Ghana is feeling the same pressure. In its outlook for the September to November minor rainy season, the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) forecast warmer-than-normal temperatures across most of the country.

Scientists link a warmer baseline to more frequent and more intense heatwaves and to heavier downpours when rain does fall.

In the 1940s, every single day was cooler than what we now call normal. Today, the world cannot manage even one.