Mike Hills

@mikewhills.bsky.social

BBC News journalist. Making charts and maps and explaining stuff in the Visual Journalism team. Also: Kid’s book author. Jazz fan. Slow runner. Oban 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

Ridgeline chart showing the distribution of global daily air temperature differences from the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900), for every year between 1940 and 2024. Each individual year resembles a hill, shaded in a darker shade of red and further to the right for warmer years. The trend is clearly towards warmer years, with 2024 standing out as first year above 1.5C.

The Arctic Ocean could see its first ice-free day by 2030, new research shows "The fact that the Arctic sea ice cover has changed so significantly that [its loss in] 2030 is even a remote possibility shows how much change there has already been in the Arctic environment” on.ft.com/3DgyKJK

Ridgeline plot showing daily sea ice extent compared with 1981-2010 average, million sq km, by year. 1979-2024. More days have less Arctic sea ice in recent years.