February sets temperature record
Earth breaks heat mark for ninth straight month
WASHINGTON — For the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole and the world’s oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus.
The latest recordbreaking in this climate change-fueled global hot streak includes sea surface temperatures that weren’t just the hottest for February, but eclipsed any month on record, soaring past August 2023’s mark and still rising at the end of the month. And February, as well the previous two winter months, soared well past the internationally set threshold for longterm warming, Copernicus reported Wednesday.
The last month that didn’t set a record for hottest month was in May 2023 and that was a close third to 2020 and 2016. Copernicus records have fallen regularly from June on.
February 2024 averaged 56.37 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the old record from 2016 by about an eighth of a degree. February was 3.19 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the late 19th century, Copernicus calculated. Only last December was more above pre-industrial levels for the month than February was.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world set a goal of trying to keep warming at or below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Copernicus’ figures are monthly and not quite the same measurement system for the Paris threshold, which is averaged over two or three decades. But Copernicus data shows the last eight months, from July 2023 on, have exceeded 1.5 degrees of warming.
Climate scientists say most of the record heat is from human-caused climate change of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Additional heat comes from a natural El Nino, a warming of the central Pacific that changes global weather patterns.
“Given the strong El Nino since mid-2023, it’s not surprising to see above-normal global temperatures, as El Ninos pump heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, driving up air temperatures. But the amount by which records have been smashed is alarming,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist Jennifer Francis, who wasn’t part of the calculations.
“And we also see the ongoing ‘hot spot’ over the Arctic, where rates of warming are much faster than the globe as a whole, triggering a cascade of impacts on fisheries, ecosystems, ice melt, and altered ocean current patterns that have long-lasting and far-reaching effects,” Francis added.
Record high ocean temperatures outside the Pacific, where El Nino is focused, show this is more than the natural effect, said Francesca Guglielmo, a Copernicus senior climate scientist.