The temperatures in January have never been as high as they are this year. This was announced by the EU Earth observation service Copernicus. The average surface temperature was 13.14 degrees Celsius, which is 1.66 degrees warmer than a typical January at the end of the 19th century, before the start of human-caused climate change.
Particularly in southern Europe, eastern Canada, the northwestern part of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, January was warmer than the long-term average. In the central part of the USA or eastern Siberia, however, it was colder than the average for the years 1990 to 2020. This is the eighth month in a row that has set a new temperature record, compared to the respective months of previous records.
The surface temperatures of the seas have also been extraordinarily high for a long time. In January, the oceans were an average of 20.97 degrees warm, another January record and only 0.01 degrees less than the previous all-time record from August 2023. Around Antarctica, 18 percent less ocean area is covered by ice than the long-term average. In the Arctic, on the other hand, an average amount of ice is observed.
“The warm ocean temperatures associated with the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific may have contributed to warm global temperatures,” said Matt Patterson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Oxford. The main cause, however, is “the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels”.
Iceberg in the Gerlache Strait: Less sea ice is observed around Antarctica than the long-term average.
(Photo: JUAN BARRETO/AFP)
The global average temperature of the past twelve months is now, with a deviation of 1.52 degrees, above the limit of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels set out in the Paris Agreement for the first time, as Copernicus announced.
“This does not mean that we have broken the climate target in the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees,” says Richard Betts, head of climate impact research at the British climate service Met Office Hadley Centre. Nevertheless, the development is “another reminder of the profound changes we have already made to our global climate and to which we must now adapt.” At the same time, efforts would have to be redoubled to limit further warming of the planet.
With material from the Science Media Center