GENEVA, (Pakistan Point News - 14th Feb, 2025) The world just had its warmest January on record, according to leading international datasets from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CRS) and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The record heat occurred despite the emergence of a La Niña event, which normally has a temporary cooling effect. It was warmer than January 2024, when there was a warming El Niño event.
January 2025 was 1.75°C above the pre-industrial level, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It said that it was the 18th month in the last nineteen months for which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
2024 was the warmest year on record, likely temporarily hitting 1.5°C for the first time, according to World Meteorological Organisation’s consolidated global analysis of six international datasets. A single year above 1.5°C does not mean that we have failed to meet Paris Agreement long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades rather than an individual year.
However, it is essential to recognise that every fraction of a degree of warming matters.
Temperature variations are not uniform. January 2025 temperatures were above average over much of the globe, but much below average over the United States, Greenland and far eastern Russia. Arctic sea ice extent in January was the joint lowest on record, according to C3S, and the second lowest according to NOAA.
