For those who have brought out their t-shirts in recent days, this is not a surprise. According to the European climate change service Copernicus, January 2020 was the warmest month ever recorded on the planet, very slightly ahead of that of 2016.
After a record decade, which ended with a year 2019 which was the second hottest ever recorded on the planet, the 2020s are starting on the same trend. In January, the average temperature of the globe thus exceeded that of January 2016 by 0.03 ° C, until then the hottest month of January ever recorded, and was 0.77 ° C higher than the average for a month of January from the 1981-2010 reference period, according to a press release from Copernicus.
Northern Europe even more affected
Most areas around the world have experienced above average temperatures, notably Europe which recorded temperatures 3.1 ° C above the average for the 1981-2010 reference period. In the north-eastern part of Europe - Scandinavia and part of Russia in particular - the differential even exceeded 6 ° C with the period 1981-2010.
According to Copernicus, the hottest five years have all occurred in the past five years, where the mercury has risen between 1.1 and 1.2 ° C above the temperature of the pre-industrial era. The decade 2010-2019 was also the warmest since the measures began. 2019 was the second hottest year on record, just 0.04 ° C behind 2016, which remains the hottest year, but marked by a particularly intense El Niño episode.
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