The world just experienced its warmest January on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA released its January 2016 temperature report Wednesday and it shows the average temperature across the globe last month was 1.87 degrees above the 20th century average. That’s 0.29 degrees warmer than the previous record, set in January 2007.
On land surfaces, the global temperature was 2.79 degrees above the 20th century average, which is only eclipsed by the land temperature average for January 2007.
However, the temperature at the sea surface was 1.55 degrees above the 20th century average, almost a half-degree warmer than the previous record from 2010.
The historical temperature record dates back to 1880.
The amount of snow in the Northern Hemisphere in January 2016 ranked in the top 10 all time. According to data from NOAA that was analyzed by the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the snow cover was 740,000 square miles above the 1981-2010 average.
That’s good for the ninth largest January snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 50 years.
The news comes after 2015 was declared the warmest year on record across the globe.
