[ad_1]
Earth experienced its fifth-warmest February on record last month – with temperatures at 1.49C above pre-industrial levels, scientists have said.
The month was marked by “extreme rainfall and widespread flooding in Western Europe and the third-lowest sea ice extent in the Arctic”, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Tuesday.
Experts say climate change was at least partly to blame for the exceptionally wet season across Western Europe.
It saw a run of intense storms including Leonardo, Pedro, and Nils, which was described as having “uncommon strength” by French weather service Meteo-France.
France, Spain, and Portugal in Europe, and Morocco, Mozambique and Botswana elsewhere in the world saw remarkably wet conditions, leading to severe flooding that caused widespread damage and loss of life and livelihoods.
Europe’s wet and warm conditions mirrored those in the UK, which saw one of its five wettest Januarys since 1890 in the southern counties of England, and the warmest February day since 2019.
Just 0.1C below landmark target
The globe’s 1.49C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level made it the fifth-warmest February across the planet, the study said.
The target of the 2015 Paris Agreement was to keep global temperatures to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The UN has warned the chance of keeping to that goal is “virtually zero”, with the UK braced for a rise of at least 2C within the next 25 years.
Researchers based their latest assessment on Copernicus’ own ERA5 dataset, compiled from hourly readings of climate data, which it describes as a climate research standard.
The warmest February on record was in 2024, it said.
In the Arctic, the average sea ice extent in February was 5% below, meaning it was the third-lowest on record for the month. In the Antarctic, the monthly sea ice…
[ad_2]
