STORY: Last month was the world’s warmest January on record, continuing a streak of extreme global temperatures.
The global average temperature in January was 1.75C higher than in pre-industrial times.
This is despite the world shifting from the El Nino warming pattern and turning towards its cooler La Niña counterpart, which cools equatorial Pacific waters and can curb global temperatures.
Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said the record temperatures outside El Nino’s influence were “a little surprising.”
“The temperatures are still at record high for most ocean basins. Also, when we look at air temperatures across the globe, we’ve seen really large anomalies, particularly over the Arctic region where those anomalies have been 20 degrees above average. So that’s a huge anomaly.”
El Nino peaked more than a year ago.
The European agency, which runs the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, assesses that La Nina has not yet fully developed and that the world is currently in neutral conditions between the two phases.
Even if La Nina does fully emerge, its cooling effect may not be enough to temporarily curb global temperatures.
This is affected by factors such as extreme heat seen in other ocean basins and the main driver of climate change: emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Globally, average sea surface temperatures in January were the second-highest on record for the month.
Scientists at Berkeley Earth and the UK Met Office said they expect 2025 to be the third-warmest year on record.
