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Last month was the hottest in January never recorded, surprising scientists who expected the Niña weather cycle to cool in the Tropical Pacific slowed down almost two years of record temperatures.
January was classified as the hottest third month worldwide, with a surface air temperature of 13.23 ° C – 1.75 ° C above the pre -industrial average – according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the EU land observation agency.
Warming, despite the emergence of Niña in December, should fuel the concerns that climate change accelerates at a time when countries like the United States, the world’s largest historic polluter, withdraw commitments to reduce emissions .
Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climatic dangers at UCL, said that the data of January was “both amazing and frankly terrifying”, adding: “Based on the valence floods and apocalyptic fires of Los Angeles, I do not think that it can be a doubt that the rupture of the dangerous and pervasive climate has arrived. However, emissions continue to increase. »»
Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European center for average weather forecasts, which oversees Copernicus, said that January was “another surprising month, continuing the record temperatures observed in the past two years, despite the development of the Niña ».
Copernicus found that Europe had known its most of January second in January, despite temperatures below the average across Iceland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the North of France and certain parts of Scandinavia .
The average sea surface temperature in the world was 20.78 ° C, the second highest value ever recorded for the month after January of last year. Although the central equatorial peace has become fresher, temperatures were “unusually high in many other ocean and seas basins,” said scientists.
Richard Allan, Professor in Climate Sciences at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, said that a large part of the “world surface of the sea remained remarkably hot at the beginning of 2025, mainly the result of warming the man”.
He added that fluctuations in natural weather conditions weekly weekdays can “cause warmer or colder conditions in continental areas” which, according to him, contributed to the unexpected record global temperatures at the beginning of 2025 “.
The natural meteorological phenomenon of Niña generally leads to cooler global temperatures, while temperatures increase during its opposite El Niño warming phase.
El Niño ended in May 2024, while the lower conditions of the Niña emerged in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean in December, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Earlier this week, James Hansen, the scientist who sounded the alarm on climate change in the 1980s, said that this year was probably an average temperature similar to 2024, despite the Niña.
Last year was the warmest recorded, the global average temperature increasing by 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels.
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