World sees warmest January on record

World Meteorological Organization – The record-breaking trend seen for much of 2023 has continued in 2024, with January being the hottest January on record, according to the European Union’s (EU) Copernicus Climate Change Service.

This is the eighth month in a row that is the warmest on record for the respective time of the year. Sea surface temperatures continue to be at record high.

The average monthly surface air temperature was 1.66 degrees Celsius warmer than an estimate of the January average for 1850 to 1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period. This is according to the ERA5 dataset used by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission.

This does not mean that the world has exceeded the lower-level target of 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era referred to in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over many years rather than monthly or annual exceedance.

It was 0.70 C above the 1991 to 2020 average for January and 0.12 C above the temperature of the previous warmest January, in 2020, according to C3S.

El Niño began to weaken in the equatorial Pacific, but marine air temperatures in general remained at an unusually high level, according to C3S.

The average global sea surface temperature for January between 60 degrees South to 60 degrees North latitude reached 20.97 C, a record for January, 0.26 C warmer than the previous warmest January (2016), and second highest value for any month in the ERA5 dataset, within 0.01 C of the record from August 2023 (20.98 C).

Since Jan. 31, the daily sea surface temperature for 60 S to 60 N has reached new absolute records, surpassing the previous highest values from Aug. 23 and 24, 2023.