Climate · interactive

The hottest latitude is not the equator

Take Earth's surface temperature and average it all the way around each circle of latitude. The warmest band doesn't sit on the equator — it sits a few degrees north, and it stays north all year. Drag through the months: watch the warm peak ride up to about +22°N in July and slide back, but never cross to the southern hemisphere — not even in January, the south's own summer.

Zonal-mean 2 m air temperature · NASA POWER 20-year climatology (MERRA-2, 2001–2020) · the record — method, the season-vs-permanent split, sources & gaps →

How to read it. The horizontal axis is latitude — south on the left, the equator in the middle, north on the right. The vertical axis is the temperature you get by averaging right around that circle of latitude (so local deserts and oceans are blended into one number per band). The dark curve is the year-round average; the coloured curve is the month you've selected. The dot marks each curve's warmest latitude. The reason the warm band sits north of the equator isn't this month's sun — it's permanent: the northern hemisphere carries far more land (which heats and cools faster than ocean), and the ocean itself ferries heat across the equator northward. Summer sun exaggerates a tilt that is already there. The record splits the peak's latitude into its permanent part and its seasonal swing, with the method and the gaps.