Last month was the world’s fifth-warmest January on record, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported, even as sharp cold spells hit large parts of the Northern Hemisphere in the second half of the month. Global mean surface air temperature reached 12.95°C, 0.51°C above the 1991–2020 January average and 1.47°C above the estimated 1850–1900 “pre-industrial” baseline used for climate comparisons.
