February 2024, one of the historically warmest months, says EU agency

NEW DELHI: The world last month experienced the warmest February on record, with the average temperature being 1.77 degrees Celsius more than the February average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period, the European Union’s climate agency said on Thursday.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) also said that every month since June last year has been the warmest such month on record.

Scientists attribute the exceptional warming to the combined effects of El Nino and human-caused climate change. C3S last month said the global mean temperature breached the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold for an entire year for the first time in January. A permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit specified in the Paris Agreement, however, refers to long-term warming over many years.

With an average temperature of 13.54 degrees Celsius, February 2024 was 0.12 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest February in 2016, C3S said. “The month was 1.77 degrees Celsius warmer than an estimate of the February average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period,” it said. The global average temperature for the last 12 months (March 2023–February 2024) is the highest on record, at 0.68 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average and 1.56 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. The daily global average temperature was exceptionally high during the first half of the month, reaching 2 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 levels on four consecutive days (February 8–11), C3S scientists said. The average global sea surface temperature (SST) for February 2024 was 21.06 degrees Celsius, the highest for any month in the dataset. C3S director Carlo Buontempo said, “February joins the long streak of records of the last few months. As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous global warming inevitably leads to new temperature extremes.

February joining the long streak of records of the last few months is not surprising as the continuous global warming inevitably leads to new temperature extremes

— Carlo Buontempo C3S director