Weather scientists have announced that last month was the warmest month ever recorded globally, making it the ninth consecutive month of record temperatures for this time of year. Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), part of the European Union, revealed that global sea surface temperatures also reached all-time highs. The global average temperature for February was 13.54 degrees Celsius, which is 0.12 degrees Celsius higher than the previous warmest February, which occurred in 2016. The data indicated that February was 1.77 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average for this month, spanning from 1850 to 1900, and 0.81 degrees Celsius above levels from 1991-2020.
The global average temperature over the past 12 months (from March 2023 to February 2024) was the highest ever recorded, at 1.56 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This temporarily places the world above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set by the Paris Agreement (a binding climate treaty signed in 2016), which, once exceeded in the long term, is expected to lead to the worst impacts of climate change. The Copernicus Climate Change Service noted that daily global temperatures were exceptionally high during the first half of the month, reaching two degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 levels on four occasions from February 8 to 11.
Figures indicated that European temperatures in February 2024 were 3.3 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average for this month, with significantly above-average temperatures in Central and Eastern Europe. The data also showed that winter in Europe, from December to February, is the second warmest recorded winter on the continent. Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, stated that the climate responds to the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so unless we manage to stabilize those gases, we will inevitably face new global temperature records and their consequences.
Dr. Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, explained that people should not be surprised that we broke another record. Humans continue to burn oil, gas, and coal, and thus the climate continues to warm. It is a well-understood relationship. There is no magic solution to climate change. We know what we need to do: stop burning fossil fuels and replace them with more sustainable and renewable energy sources. Until we do that, extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change will continue to destroy lives and livelihoods.
