February 2024 was the warmest February ever recorded, according to the EU’s climate service. This marks the ninth consecutive month of record-breaking temperatures. Since June 2023, each month has set new temperature highs for their respective times of year.
The world’s sea surface is also at its hottest ever recorded, and Antarctic sea-ice has reached extremely low levels. While the Pacific’s El Niño weather event has contributed to these temperatures, human-caused climate change is the primary cause.
“Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are the main culprit,” says Prof Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in at least two million years, and they increased significantly over the past year.
These gases made February 2024 about 1.77C warmer than the times before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. This temperature broke the previous record from 2016 by around 0.12C. The heat was particularly severe in western Australia, southeast Asia, southern Africa, and South America.
The average temperature over the past 12 months is now 1.56C above pre-industrial levels. In 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to try to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C to avoid severe climate impacts. While this threshold hasn’t been broken yet, the continuous record-breaking temperatures show how close the world is to doing so.
In addition to air temperatures, other climate metrics are also at record levels. One significant example is sea surface temperatures. This increase in oceanic heat is not just due to El Niño, but has been consistently high for the past 10 months. This is concerning as it can lead to mass bleaching of coral reefs, rising sea levels, and more intense hurricanes.
The El Niño event of 2023-24, one of the five strongest ever recorded, is gradually weakening. It will continue to affect temperatures and weather patterns for the next few months, but is expected to switch to neutral conditions between April and June, and then to a cooler phase known as La Niña between June and August. This could temporarily cool global air temperatures.
However, if human activities continue to release large amounts of greenhouse gases, temperatures will keep rising in the long term, leading to more record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather. “We need to stop burning fossil fuels and replace them with more sustainable, renewable energy sources,” says Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London. “Until we do that, extreme weather events intensified by climate change will continue to destroy lives and livelihoods.”
