Climate scientists have said record-breaking trends observed in 2023 have continued in 2024, with January being the hottest month on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS).
Nigerian Metereological Agency (NIMET) has also reported that air temperature hit around 41°C in the North and 39°C in the South recently, with model projections still showing possibility of temperatures to remain high in the coming days.
There are concerns about health effects of increased temperature like dehydration, which can also trigger fainting and health challenges like chicken pox disease, measles, heat rash, weakness of the body, slight fever, and dry lips, among others.
The scientists emphasised that this is the eighth month in a row that is the warmest on record for the respective time of the year, as sea surface temperatures continue to be at record high.
Average monthly surface air temperature was 1.66°C warmer than an estimate of the January average for the period 1850 to 1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period. The ERA5 data set used by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission, states.
However, the scientists say this does not mean that the world has exceeded the lower-level target of 1.5° Celsius above the pre-industrial era referred to in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Specifically, it was 0.70°C above the 1991 to 2020 average for January and 0.12°C above the temperature of the previous warmest January, in 2020, according to CCCS. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) uses the ERA5 dataset and five other internationally recognised datasets for its climate monitoring and state of the climate reports.
The final WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report will be published for World Meteorological Day on March 23, 2024. WMO has already confirmed that 2023 was by far the warmest year on record due to human-induced climate change and a warming El Niño.
The El Niño began to weaken in the equatorial Pacific, but marine air temperatures in general remained at an unusually high level, according to CCCS. The average global sea surface temperature for January over 60°S to 60°N reached 20.97°C, a record for January, 0.26°C warmer than the previous warmest January (2016), and second highest value for any month in the ERA5 dataset, within 0.01°C of the record from August 2023 (20.98°C) while since January 31, the daily sea surface temperature for 60°S to 60°N has reached new absolute records, surpassing the previous highest values from August 23 and August 24, 2023.
