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The peak flowering of cherry trees in Kyoto, Japan, has been recorded since the ninth century. Yasuyuki Aono and colleagues from the Osaka Prefecture University collated this data from historical diaries and chronicles, indicating the dates on which cherry blossom viewing parties had been held or other observations of peak blossom.

In 2025, the peak cherry blossom happened on April 4th.

This long-run data is a proxy measure for how the climate has changed. The onset of cherry blossoms is linked with warmer temperatures. Since the early 20th century, the combined effects of urbanization and higher temperatures due to climate change have gradually moved the peak blossom earlier in the year.

Explore this data in our interactive visualization →

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The world is heating up. By the 2010s, the global average temperature of the air above the surface was about 1°C higher than in the 1940s. But some regions are warming much faster.

The chart shows how average surface air temperatures have changed each decade across continents and oceans compared to historical averages.

The Arctic warmed more than any other region — by the 2010s, it was 2.8°C hotter than in the 1940s.

In the Arctic, melting sea ice has amplified this temperature increase: ice reflects sunlight, so having less of it leads to more warming.

Europe was in second. Since land heats up faster than water, its mostly land-based geography has increased its rate of warming. It has also seen a rapid reduction in aerosols from air pollution. These improvements in air quality can inadvertently increase temperatures because there are fewer aerosols to reflect sunlight.

You can explore how temperatures in each continent, ocean, and country have changed over time →

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Foreign aid provides millions worldwide with life-saving treatments, emergency food supplies, and humanitarian assistance.

But where does most of this money come from: the governments of rich countries, or wealthy individuals?

95% of foreign aid comes from governments. Less than 5% comes from private philanthropic donors. This data focuses on larger private donations in the form of grants; it does not include the smaller, individual charity donations you or I might make.

This means that those of us living in wealthy democracies — which is many of our readers — play a key role in determining the size of the global foreign aid budget. If we want more aid to reach the world’s poorest, we hold some power through the governments we elect and the priorities we demand of them.

Most of our governments — including my own in the United Kingdom — do not meet the UN’s target of giving 0.7% of their gross national income in aid. In fact, the UK has recently announced plans to cut its aid budget significantly.

Explore global data on who gives and receives foreign aid →

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Polio is an infectious disease that primarily impacts children, and can cause paralysis and even death. In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands to tens of thousands of people suffered from paralysis from this terrible disease every year.

The first injectable vaccine against polio was introduced in the United States in 1955. Six years later, a second vaccine was introduced, which could be taken orally.

By 1961, over 85% of US children under ten had received at least one vaccination against polio.

As a result, the last wild polio outbreak in the US occurred in 1979, and the disease was officially eliminated from North, Central, and South America in 1994. This means it was not spreading within this region, and any new cases were only seen among individuals infected elsewhere.

Read our colleague Max’s article about the global fight against polio →

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Globally, electricity and heating remain the largest sources of carbon emissions, but in some countries, transport has overtaken them.

In Spain and Austria, heating and electricity emissions fell while transport rose. In the UK, both declined.

The trend reflects the decarbonization of electricity, driven by the transition to renewables, while transport emissions remain high due to continued reliance on fossil fuels.

As countries work toward net-zero targets, addressing transport emissions will be critical in the fight against climate change.

Explore more in our data on greenhouse emissions →

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Flu viruses spread every year and cause seasonal outbreaks. But one type, called influenza B Yamagata, may have completely disappeared.

The chart shows global confirmed cases of B Yamagata flu over time. Before 2020, it peaked each flu season. However, no confirmed cases have been reported worldwide in the last five years.

This likely happened because COVID-19 precautions — such as social distancing, masks, and travel restrictions — sharply reduced social contact. With fewer opportunities to spread from person to person, B Yamagata couldn’t sustain transmission and eventually died out.

Regulatory health agencies like the WHO, European Medicines Agency, and US CDC have recommended removing it from flu vaccines. This could allow room for other strains to be included in seasonal flu vaccines, improving overall vaccine effectiveness.

Explore the data on influenza in our data explorer →

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China is often the poster child for rapid reductions in poverty, and for good reason: in the early 1980s, over 90% of its population lived in extreme poverty, but by the early 2020s, that number had dropped to nearly zero.

Some people assume that China is the only reason global extreme poverty has declined. But that’s wrong: many other countries have seen dramatic reductions in poverty. Indonesia is one clear example; it’s shown alongside China on the chart.

In 1984, three-quarters of Indonesians lived on less than $2.15 per day. By 2023, this had fallen to less than 2%. While it didn’t quite match China’s decline, it has still been impressive. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from 120 million to 5 million.

Note that the international poverty line is extremely low, defined as people living on less than $2.15 per day. But Indonesia has also made progress measured by higher poverty lines.

Explore progress against poverty across the world in our data explorer →

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Several countries have recently managed to stop and even reverse the erosion of their democratic institutions.

The chart illustrates these turnarounds using the liberal democracy index from the Varieties of Democracy project. This index measures key aspects of democracy, such as the fairness of elections and checks on government power. It ranges from 0 (highly autocratic) to 1 (highly democratic).

The four countries in the chart all saw serious declines in democracy over the past 20 years—these declines are shown in red. In Thailand, democracy eroded quickly, while in Zambia, it happened more slowly.

Still, in each case, people resisted growing authoritarianism. As a result, these countries were able to partially or fully restore previous levels of liberal democracy.

These examples show that when democracy deteriorates, its fate is not sealed, and democratic institutions can be reclaimed.

Read more about how democratic decline has been reversed before in my article →

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Homicide rates in Brazil are among some of the highest in the world, and young people are more likely to be victims.

Another large killer of young people is road injuries. But in Brazil, the number of homicide deaths among young people is twice as high as that of road fatalities.

You can see this in the chart: an estimated 48,000 people aged 15 to 49 years died by homicide in 2021 — almost double the 25,000 who died from road injuries.

These comparisons are based on data from the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. Note that estimates of homicides can vary by source, as explained by my colleagues Bastian Herre and Fiona Spooner.

Explore more data on homicide rates across the world, including comparisons of different sources →

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The world needs to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon power if we’re to reduce our carbon emissions and tackle climate change.

There are two key sources of low-carbon power: renewables (which include solar, wind, hydropower and others) and nuclear.

While rapid growth in solar and wind has increased the amount of power coming from renewables, a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear means it’s playing a shrinking role in the global electricity mix.

In the chart, you can see the share of global electricity coming from fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear since 1985. Since 2000, nuclear and renewables have followed very different trajectories. Back then, both categories made up a similar share of global electricity, but today, renewables make up more than three times as much: 30% compared to 9%.

The total amount of electricity produced by nuclear plants is almost exactly the same as it was two decades ago. But because the world produces much more electricity overall, its share of the electricity mix has declined.

Explore the electricity mix of different countries in our Energy Data Explorer →

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The HIV epidemic — which started in the early 1980s and continued into the 1990s — has had lasting impacts that continue today. Almost one million people still die from HIV/AIDS every year globally.

However, some countries were hit much harder than others.

In the chart, you can see the share of all deaths in a given year that were caused by HIV/AIDS in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that were badly affected.

At the height of the epidemic, more than half of all deaths in Zimbabwe and Botswana and almost 40% in South Africa and Namibia were caused by the disease.

Thankfully, interventions to prevent the spread of HIV and treatments such as antiretroviral therapy have reduced death rates across the world. But more than one in ten deaths in these countries are still caused by AIDS today.

Read our article on antiretroviral therapy and the millions of lives it has saved →

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In 2008, Bhutan started measuring the “Gross Happiness Index” as an official metric to track the well-being of its population. As a result, it’s often coined the “Land” or “Kingdom of Happiness”.

Bhutan tracks gross happiness with in-depth surveys, which other countries do not. How does it compare across similar metrics where we can make these comparisons? Despite its reputation, it’s actually not an outlier.

Self-reported life satisfaction is one internationally comparable metric measured in the annual World Happiness Report. Respondents in every country are asked to rate their lives based on a 10-step ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life, and 10 is the best.

Self-reported life satisfaction tends to be higher in richer countries, although there is a spread among countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The chart plots one against the other.

For its income level, Bhutan has a fairly average life satisfaction score; in the global comparison, it’s about as happy as we would expect based on the incomes of people in the country.

Explore more data on levels of happiness across the world →

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For many decades, most children in Europe were born to mothers in their twenties. However, since the mid-1970s, there has been a steady increase in the number of women giving birth in their thirties.

As the chart shows, since 2015, women in their thirties have given birth to the greatest number of babies; in the same year, it became more common for a woman in her forties to give birth than for women in their teens.

Many factors are causing these changes, including women spending more years in education and developing their careers, easily accessible contraception, improvements in fertility treatment, and high childcare costs.

Explore at what age women are having children in your country →

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Antibiotics can play an important role in preventing disease and improving the health of animals. But overusing them, particularly for livestock, poses a risk to human health through antibiotic resistance.

Over the last decade, Europe has made much progress in reducing antibiotic use in farm animals. This has been achieved through stricter regulations and, in some countries, taxes on antibiotics.

The chart shows the change in sales of these antimicrobials for livestock between 2010 and 2022. It shows a range of European countries, with a few examples highlighted in bold.

Antibiotic use has fallen by over half in some countries, such as the UK, Italy, France, and the Netherlands.

These countries have still managed to maintain productive agricultural sectors by focusing on other ways to manage disease risk and animal growth, such as vaccinations, ventilation, cleaner equipment, and high-quality diets.

Read more about the differences in antibiotic use for livestock across the world →

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January 2025 was the hottest January on record. This was surprising because the world recently transitioned from El Niño (which tends to increase global temperatures) to La Niña (which tends to cool them). We might have expected this cooling to be reflected in January’s temperatures. It was not.

But February did not follow this same pattern.

The chart tracks monthly temperature anomalies, comparing current temperatures to historical averages. Each dot represents a February anomaly, with El Niño (warmer) years in orange and red and La Niña (cooler) years in blue.

As expected, February 2025 cooled compared to February 2024, following the usual pattern where La Niña years tend to be cooler than the El Niño years before them.

However, this doesn’t mean global warming has slowed. Recent La Niña years are still warmer than El Niño years from just a few decades ago, showing that even natural climate fluctuations don’t reverse the long-term warming trend.

We update this data monthly so you can track how these patterns evolve.

Read our recent article that explains in more detail how the world is warming despite natural fluctuations from the El Niño cycle →

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In every country in the world, women live longer than men — but the size of this gap in life expectancy varies widely.

The difference is striking in some countries, like Russia and Ukraine, where women’s life expectancy is over 10 years longer. Their gaps have been wide due to higher death rates in young and middle-aged men — often due to alcohol use, smoking, and other risks. The war in Ukraine has widened this gap further, as men face high mortality from conflict.

The gap is much smaller in other countries, including in West Africa and South Asia. There are likely multiple reasons for this, including higher rates of maternal mortality and HIV among women. Just a few decades ago, Bangladesh and India had shorter female than male life expectancies due to higher rates of female infanticide and neglect in childhood, and the gap in lifespans in these countries is still relatively small.

Many factors affect life expectancy, and the sex gap in lifespans has varied widely across countries and over time.

You can read more in my article about why women live longer than men →

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The world's population has more than doubled over the last 60 years, but global food production has managed to keep up.

The chart shows the change in four indicators since 1961: cereal production, cereal yields, land use for cereals, and population. Each metric is expressed in its relative change since 1961 (which is given a value of zero).

Cereal production has increased by 3.5-fold, more than the 2.6-fold growth in population. That means production has grown faster than the population, and the world produces more cereal per person than 60 years ago.

We can also see what has driven this increase. You can grow more food by either increasing crop yields or using more land. While land use has increased, most of this growth has come from higher crop yields. This has spared some natural habitats from being converted into farmland.

Read more in my article on the Green Revolution and food production →

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Putting a number on “happiness” is hard. But one way to better understand how satisfied people are with their lives is to ask them.

Self-reported life satisfaction is one key metric that researchers rely on. Respondents are asked to rate their lives on a 10-step ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life, and 10 is the best.

The chart shows self-reported life satisfaction measured against gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The two are positively correlated: people in richer countries tend to be more satisfied with their lives.

Of course, income is not the only thing that matters. You can also see the large spread of values for countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. For example, South American countries tend to have higher happiness levels than those in other regions.

Explore more data on life satisfaction across countries, within countries, and over people’s lifespan →

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When we emit carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere, most of it stays there for centuries or millennia. This means that CO₂ emitted even a century ago has contributed to the rising temperatures we see today.

In other words, how much the climate warms depends on how much cumulative CO₂ is emitted over time.

The chart shows the ten countries with the largest share of the world’s historical emissions, based on cumulative emissions from fossil fuels and industry since 1750.

The United States has contributed the most, accounting for almost one quarter. This is followed by China and Russia.

There are many other ways to understand contributions to climate change – explore data on annual, per capita, and trade-adjusted emissions →

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Global average yields of cereal crops have tripled over the past 60 years. This has been crucial to feeding a growing population while sparing natural habitat from expanding agricultural land.

However, some cereal crops have seen much larger gains in efficiency. Maize (corn) and rice achieve the highest yields and have seen huge gains in recent decades. Wheat and barley have also performed well.

As the chart shows, crops like sorghum and millet have lagged behind. A hectare of land could yield 5 to 6 tonnes of corn or rice but only 1 to 1.5 tonnes of millet and sorghum.

It’s not just that yields for these crops are much lower today; growth over the past 60 years has been much more modest, increasing by less than 50%.

This is a huge challenge since these are key staple crops across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where hunger rates are the highest and farmer incomes are the lowest.

Read more in my article on increasing yields in Sub-Saharan Africa →