Heat streak
While temperatures were below average last month over parts of North America, Eastern Europe and large areas of eastern Asia, it was hotter than average over northern Chile and Argentina, western Australia, the southwestern United States and Mexico.
Temperatures were particularly elevated north of the Arctic Circle in February, averaging 4C above the 1991–2020 reference period, Copernicus said.
One area near the North Pole was 11C (around 20 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average over the month.
Copernicus uses satellite observations of polar regions going back to the 1970s and shipping records before that.
Climate scientists had expected the exceptional heat spell across the world to subside after a warming El Nino event peaked in January 2024 and conditions gradually shifted to a cooling La Nina phase.
But last year was the hottest in recorded history and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday the La Nina phase was “weak” and likely to be brief.
In the 20 months since mid-2023, only July 2024 dipped below 1.5C of warming, Copernicus said.
This has raised concerns that it will be almost impossible to keep the pledge that world leaders made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to stop the planet’s long-term average temperature from rising more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its climate calculations, with records going back to 1940.
Other sources of climate data — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — have allowed scientists to say that the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.