Meteorologists predict that February is set to break a new heat record due to global warming and El Niño, which raises temperatures on land and in the oceans worldwide.
Heating Spike
The heating spike this month has become so pronounced that climate charts are breaking new ground, particularly for sea-surface temperatures, which have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is occurring.
The surface air temperature on February 9, the most recent day for which data is available, was 13.7°C - a 1.3°C anomaly, making it the hottest February day in recorded history and narrowly missing the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5°C.
The temperature on February 9 was nearly a degree higher than the 12.8°C recorded on the same date last year, according to data from the University of Maine's ClimateReanalyser.
According to Zeke Hausfather, a Berkeley Earth scientist, humanity is on track to have the hottest February in recorded history, following January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, and May.
El Niño is expected to cause 2°C of warming beyond pre-industrial levels in recent weeks. However, if it follows previous years' patterns, it should have a brief peak impact before cooling down in the coming months.
Although a temperature-lowering La Niña is expected, Hausfather noted that the climate has become increasingly unpredictable and difficult to forecast.
"I'd say February 2024 is an odds-on favorite to beat the prior record set in 2016, but it's by no means a foregone conclusion at this point as weather models suggest that global temperatures will fall back down in the coming week," he added.
Read Also: Ocean Temperature Seen As Main Driver Of Marine Heat Wave In 2021, Study Finds
Heat Records Globally
The first half of February astounded weather observers.
Maximiliano Herrera, a blogger on Extreme Temperatures Around the World, called the spike in thousands of meteorological station heat records "insane," "total madness," and "climatic history rewritten." What astounded him was not just the number of records, but also how many of them outperformed previous ones.
He stated that 12 meteorological stations in Morocco recorded temperatures of 33.9°C or higher, which was not only a national record for the hottest winter day but also more than 5°C above average for July.
Harbin, in northern China, had to halt its winter ice festival because temperatures rose above freezing on three days this month, an unprecedented occurrence.
In the last week, monitoring stations in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Japan, North Korea, the Maldives, and Belize have set monthly heat records.
Herrera stated that 140 countries broke monthly heat records in the first half of this month, which is comparable to the final results of the last six record-breaking months of 2023 and more than three times any month prior to 2023.
According to Katharine Hayhoe, head scientist for The Nature Conservancy, the uncertainty regarding how the many elements interact serves as a warning that we do not completely understand how the complex Earth system is responding to unprecedented radiative forcing.
"This is happening at a much faster rate than ever documented in the past," she said. "If anything, we are much more likely to underestimate the impact of those changes on human society than to overestimate them," she stressed.
Related Article: Scorching Heat Wave in Morocco: Country Recorded Its Highest Temperature Ever of 50.4 Degrees Celsius
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