More climate records fall in world's warmest February

Science and culture 7 March, 2024 16:15

Last month was the world's warmest February in modern times, the EU's climate service says, extending the run of monthly records to nine in a row.

Each month since June 2023 has seen new temperature highs for the time of year.

The world's sea surface is at its hottest on record, while Antarctic sea-ice has again reached extreme lows.

Temperatures are still being boosted by the Pacific's El Niño weather event, but human-caused climate change is by far the main driver of the warmth.

"Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit," stresses Prof Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

Carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level for at least two million years, according to the UN's climate body, and increased by near-record levels again over the past year.

Those warming gases helped make February 2024 about 1.77C warmer than "pre-industrial" times - before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

This breaks the previous record, from 2016, by around 0.12C.

These temperatures saw particularly severe heat afflict western Australia, southeast Asia, southern Africa and South America.

The 12-month average now sits at 1.56C above pre-industrial levels - after the first year-long breach of 1.5C warming was confirmed last month.

Back in 2015 in Paris, nearly 200 countries agreed to try to keep the rise in warming under 1.5C, to help avoid some of the worst climate impacts.

That threshold in the Paris agreement is generally accepted to mean a 20-year average - so it hasn't yet been broken - but the relentless string of records illustrates how close the world is getting to doing so.

Oceans and sea-ice under strain

Recent records haven't just been limited to air temperatures. Countless climate metrics are far beyond levels seen in modern times.

One of the most notable is sea surface temperatures. As the graph below shows, the margin of records in recent months has been particularly striking.

Researchers are keen to stress that the scale and extent of the oceanic heat is not simply a consequence of the natural weather event known as El Niño, which was declared in June 2023.

"Ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific clearly reflect El Niño. But sea surface temperatures in other parts of the globe have been persistently and unusually high for the past 10 months," explains Prof Saulo.

"This is worrying and cannot be explained by El Niño alone."

Ocean warming has prompted concerns about the mass bleaching of coral reefs. It also raises global sea-levels and can help to fuel higher intensity hurricanes.

Unusually warm waters may also have been a factor in another exceptional month for Antarctic sea-ice. The three lowest minimum extents in the satellite era have now occurred in the last three years.