PARIS: Last month was the hottest January on record, blitzing the previous high and stunning climate scientists who expected cooler La Nina conditions to finally start quelling a long-running heat streak.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service said January was 1.75C hotter than pre-industrial times, extending a persistent run of historic highs over 2023 and 2024, as human-caused greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet. Climate scientists had expected this exceptional spell to subside after a warming El Nino event peaked in January 2024 and conditions gradually shifted to a cooling La Nina phase.

But the heat has lingered at record or near-record levels ever since, sparking debate among scientists about what other factors could be driving warming to the top end of expectations. Scientists warn that every fraction of a degree of warming increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events like heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts.

January was 0.09C hotter than the previous high of January 2024 — a “sizeable margin” in global temperature terms, said Julien Nicolas, a climate scientist from Copernicus.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2025