Last month was the warmest February ever recorded globally, the ninth consecutive month of historically high temperatures across the planet, as climate change takes the world into "uncharted territory", the European climate monitor said on Thursday 7 March.
Last year saw a flurry of storms, crop-drying droughts and devastating wildfires, while human-caused climate change – amplified by the natural weather phenomenon El Niño – caused warming to possibly the warmest levels in more than 100.000 years.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last month that the period from February 2023 to January 2024 marked the first time the Earth endured 12 consecutive months at temperatures 1,5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial era.
That trend continued, the latest monthly update confirmed, with February overall 1,77 degrees Celsius warmer than the monthly estimate for 1850-1900. year, the pre-industrial reference period.
Temperatures soared across the globe in February, from Siberia to South America, and Europe also recorded its second warmest winter on record.
In the first half of the month, daily global temperatures were "extraordinarily high", Copernicus said, with four consecutive days recording averages two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times - just months after the world registered its first single day above that borders.
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