by Last month the most popular January was on record, which blended the previous high and stunning climate scientists who expected that cooler La Nina circumstances would finally start suppressing a long-running heat streak.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service said that January 1,75 ° C was hetero than pre-industrial times, which extended a stubborn series of historical highlights over 2023 and 2024 because the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans heating the planet.
Climate scientists had expected this exceptional spell to disappear after a warming from El Nino in January 2024 and the conditions gradually shifted to a cooling La Nina phase.
But the heat has since stuck at record or near-record levels, which causes debate among scientists about which other factors can float to the top of expectations.
January 2025 was the Warmest January ever. Last month, 1.75 ° C was above the pre-industrial level and 0.79 ° C above the average of 1991-2020. The persistence of high temperature. Underlines important climate trends.
Read the full #C3S Climate Bulletins: https://t.co/pcindl2rno pic.twitter.com/jzutxlwqqq– Copernicus ECMWF (@copernicusecmwf) February 6, 2025
Scientists warn that every fraction of a degree of warming up increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather conditions such as heat waves, heavy rainfall and drought.
January was 0.09 ° C hotter than the previous highlight of January 2024 – a “extensive margin” in global temperature terms, said Julien Nicolas, a climate scientist from Copernicus.
“This is what makes it a bit of a surprise … You see this cooling effect, or at least temporary brake, at the global temperature we expected to see,” he said AFP.
Stefan Rahmstorf, from the University of Potsdam, said it was the first time that the temperatures registered during a La Nina period were above those of a previous El Nino.
“This is of serious care – in the last sixty -six years, all twenty -five La Nina January are cooler than the surrounding years,” he said.
Weak La Nina
This year it is expected that La Nina will be weak and Copernicus said that the prevailing temperatures in parts of the equatorial Pacific suggested: “A delay or stuck from the movement to” the cooling penitis.
Nicolas said it could disappear completely in March.
Last month, Copernicus said that the worldwide temperatures had exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius on average in 2023 and 2024 in 2023 and 2024.
This was not a permanent infringement of the 1.5C warm-up goal in the long term under the Paris-but climate agreement was a clear sign that the limit was being tested.
In general, it is not expected that 2025 2023 and 2024 will follow in the history books: scientists predict that it will be the third hottest year.
Copernicus said that during 2025 it would follow the ocean temperatures closely on hints about how the climate could behave.
Oceans are an essential climate controller and carbon zinc, and cooler waters can absorb larger amounts of heat from the atmosphere, allowing the air temperatures to lower.
They also save 90 percent of the excess heat that is stuck by the release of greenhouse gases by humanity.
“This heat will show up periodically,” said Nicolas.
“I think that is also one of the questions – is this what has happened in recent years?”
The temperatures of the sea surface are exceptionally warm in 2023 and 2024, and Copernicus said that the lectures were the second highest registered in January.
“That’s the thing that is a bit enigmatic – why they stay so hot,” said Nicolas.
Open
Bill McGuire, a climate scientist from University College London, said that it was “amazing and frankly frightening” that January was at record high despite the emergence of La Nina.
Joel Hirschi, from the British National Oceanography Center, warned against reading too much in the data of a few months, and said that record heat was observed after El Nino phases, even after the start of La Nina.
Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven global warming in the long term, and that natural climate variability can also influence the temperatures from one year to the following.
But natural warming cycles such as El Nino could not only explain what had taken place in the atmosphere and seas, and answers were sought elsewhere.
A theory is that a global shift to cleaner shipping fuels accelerated global warming in 2020 by reducing sulfur emissions that make clouds more mirror -like and are a reflection of sunlight.
In December a peer-reviewed paper or a reduction in the low-lying clouds had had more heat reached the earth’s surface.
“These are ways that must be taken seriously and must remain open,” Robert Vautard, a leading scientist at the IPCC of the UN of the UN Climate Expert, told AFP.
The EU monitor uses billions of measurements of satellites, ships, planes and weather stations to help its climate calculations.
The records go back to 1940, but other sources of climate data – such as ice cream cars, tree rings and coral frame – enable scientists to expand their conclusions with the help of evidence from much further in the past.
Scientists say that the current period is probably the hottest that the earth has been in the last 125,000 years.
© Agence France-Presse
