This immediately follows 2024, which has the title of the hottest year on record.
Not all records are meant to be broken, but, unfortunately for us, human activities – the primary driver for the climate crisis – have made this January the warmest ever on record.
This is according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which noted that globally, January 2025 was 0.79 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.75 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average.
For the period between February 2024 and January 2025, temperatures were on average 0.73 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 levels and 1.61 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels, making it the hottest year on record and the first ever year to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Last January is now the second warmest January on record, at 1.66 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
Europe heating fastest
Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, the data shows, and alarmingly, European land in the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth. And changes to the atmospheric circulation are favouring more frequent summer heatwaves, leading to more melting glaciers and changes in the pattern of precipitation.
According to data by Copernicus, the most advanced observational programme orbiting Earth, this past month in Europe was 2.51 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average, the second-warmest January on record, only beaten by January 2020, which was 0.13 degrees Celsius hotter.
Moreover, the average temperature in Europe over the past year was 1.67 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 annual average – the highest 12-month average on record for the continent.
Outside Europe, temperatures were most above average for January over northeast and northwest Canada, Alaska and Siberia. While most of Africa, southern South America and Australia had warmer-than-average temperatures, with Australia having its second-warmest January since 1910. Antarctica also experienced temperatures that were “predominantly higher” than average, Copernicus data showed.
More frequent climate extremes
However, major deviations from global average temperatures have also made some parts of the world cooler. Temperatures were most widely below average for January in the US, east Russia, southeast Asia and Thailand. While parts of Europe, including Ireland, the UK, Iceland and northern France had below-average temperatures last month.
The overall global heating and related changes to weather patterns translates on the ground into more frequent climate “extremes” in the form of record-breaking heatwaves, drenching rains, droughts, extreme wildfires and hurricanes – and unfortunately for us, we are already living through all these extremes.
Just weeks ago, Ireland faced Storm Éowyn, touted to be the one of the worst wind events ever recorded in the country. The weather event left more than 760,000 without power in Ireland, with more than 20,000 homes and business still without power as a result.
Meanwhile, the weeks-long wildfires, still ravaging California, razed more than 50,000 acres – or more than 200 sq km of land – to ash, destroying nearly 17,000 structures, including thousands of homes.
Moreover, last year’s catastrophic floods that hit the Spanish region of Valencia, took the lives of more than 200 people, almost half of whom were 70 years old or above.
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