Brussels February 6 2025: Last month was the world’s warmest January on record, continuing a streak of extreme global temperatures despite expectations that cooler La Nina conditions might quell a streak of record-breaking global temperatures, European Union scientists said on Thursday.
January extended a run of extraordinary heat, in which 18 of the last 19 months saw an average global temperature of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.
That was despite the world shifting from the El Nino warming pattern – which helped make 2024 the world’s warmest year on record – and turning towards its cooler La Niña counterpart, which involves the cooling of equatorial Pacific waters, and can curb global temperatures.
The global average temperature in January was 1.75C higher than in pre-industrial times.
Globally, average sea surface temperatures in January were the second-highest on record for the month, exceeded only by January 2024.
