January the Hottest on Record

The Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Union announced that last month was the hottest January ever recorded globally, amid an ongoing exceptional heatwave due to climate change. According to the service, which has records dating back to 1950, last month's temperatures surpassed those of January 2020, previously the warmest January. This announcement follows the classification of 2023 as the hottest year on Earth in records dating back to 1850, as climate change driven by human activities and the El Niño weather phenomenon, which causes surface water temperatures in the eastern Pacific to rise, contribute to increasing temperatures. Since last June, every month has been the hottest on record compared to the same month in previous years. Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the service, stated, "Not only is this the warmest January on record, but we have also experienced a 12-month period in which temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial reference period," according to Reuters. She emphasized that "rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to halt global temperature rise."