Warmer, wetter, hotter, drier — February caps unending stretch of record temperatures

The warmest northern hemisphere winter on record was accompanied by unsurpassed sea surface temperatures and unusual drought and rain patterns across the world, the Europe’s Earth observation agency said. 

The global average temperature in February was 1.77C above the pre-industrial average and marked the ninth month in a row of record heat, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

The rise in global average temperatures continued to trend above the critical benchmark of 1.5C higher than pre-industrial levels, and over the past 12 months have surpassed the 1850 to 1900 average by 1.56C.

“People who think we can keep warming to 1.5C and continue to open new gas and oilfields might as well claim the earth is flat and believe in Bigfoot,” said Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute.

The latest data capped a record heat season for December, January and February globally, affecting everywhere from northern Siberia and central and north-west America to parts of South America, Africa and Australia, causing unusual warm, wet and dry conditions depending on the region.

It was wetter than average in Europe in a large band from the Iberian peninsula to western Russia, over the UK and Ireland, southern Scandinavia and the Alps. Rainfall was also above average over much of Italy.

Drier-than-average conditions were observed across most of the Mediterranean countries, parts of the Balkans, much of Turkey, regions of Iceland and northern Scandinavia, as well as large parts of western Russia.

It also meant wildfires in parts of North America, South America and Australia, Copernicus said. At the same time, parts of Australia and Bolivia are also experiencing destructive flooding.

In central Asia, as well as China, Japan, Indonesia and Pakistan, parts of the country were wetter than normal for winter.

The unusual winter heat was particularly marked in central and eastern Europe, the agency noted. Thermometers in parts of eastern Europe hit more than 10C at night and 20C during the day. In southern Romania and northern Bulgaria, some of last month’s temperatures deviated from the norm by more than 14C, the World Meteorological Organization has said.

Greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activity are still rising, causing the global warming trend to continue unabated. Emissions need to be cut by almost half by 2030 to limit the rise in the long term global average temperature to no more than 1.5C.

Carlo Buontempo, Copernicus’ director, said the record-breaking heat was “not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes.”

The short-term breach of the 1.5C warming level does not indicate a failure to uphold the 2015 Paris agreement, as the landmark treaty aims to limit the long-term rise in global temperature to well below 2C and ideally to 1.5C over a longer period of more than a decade. 

Ocean temperatures around the world in February hit more than 21C, a record high for any month, breaking a record set last August. 

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El Niño, the naturally occurring weather phenomenon associated with a warming of the Pacific Ocean, helped make 2023 a record year for heat.

“What is more surprising is that sea surface temperatures are at record levels over regions far away from the centre of El Niño action, such as the tropical Atlantic and Indian Ocean,” Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading noted.

El Niño has a 75 per cent chance of persisting until May, according to the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The agency put the chances of a swing towards the Pacific Ocean cooling phenomenon known as La Niña at 77 per cent between September and November. 

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