The world had its warmest January on record – World

The record-breaking trend seen for most of 2023 will continue into 2024, making January the hottest January on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Agency.

This is the eighth month in a row and the warmest day on record for each period of the year. Sea surface temperatures continue to reach record highs.

The monthly average surface temperature was 1.66°C higher than the estimated January average for the designated pre-industrial reference period, 1850-1900. This is according to the ERA5 dataset used by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), carried out by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission.

This does not mean that the world has exceeded the lower target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels mentioned in the Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over many years, rather than monthly or yearly exceedances.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Agency, this temperature was 0.70 degrees Celsius higher than the average January temperature from 1991 to 2020 and 0.12 degrees Celsius higher than the previous warmest January, 2020.

WMO uses the ERA5 dataset and five other internationally recognized datasets for climate monitoring and climate status reporting.

WMO’s final global climate report for 2023 will be released in time for World Meteorological Day on 23 March 2024. The WMO has already acknowledged that 2023 was the warmest year on record due to anthropogenic climate change and El Niño warming.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Agency, El Niño began to weaken near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, but ocean temperatures generally remained unusually high.

The global average sea surface temperature in January from 60 degrees south to 60 degrees north latitude reached 20.97 degrees, a new January record. This was 0.26 degrees warmer than the previous warmest month, January (2016), and the second warmest month in the ERA5 dataset. , within 0.01℃ of the record in August 2023 (20.98℃).

Since January 31, daily sea surface temperatures between 60°S and 60°N have set new absolute records, surpassing the previous highs of August 23 and 24, 2023.