“Both 2020 and 2016 have had very similar year-to-date temperatures,” Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute in California, tells
The Independent. “A little more or less warming in December could push us slightly above or slightly below.”
Several different research organisations across the world keep track of how global average temperatures are changing from year to year. In Europe, the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre and EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service monitor global temperatures. In the US, it falls to Nasa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Berkeley Earth.