Last month was the fifth warmest January documented globally, according to Copernicus

Berlin.- Last month was the fifth warmest January globally since records began, with contrasting temperature extremes in the northern and southern hemispheres, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union's (EU) Earth observation program, reported this Tuesday. Last month, the average surface air temperature recorded was 12.95 °C, which is 0.51 °C above the 1991-2020 January average and 1.47 °C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level, according to the most recent bulletin from the institution based in Bonn (Germany). In general, January was only 0.28 °C colder than the warmest January ever recorded, in 2025. During the second half of January, severe cold conditions affected large areas of the northern hemisphere, including North America, Europe, and Siberia, driven primarily by a more undulating polar jet stream than usual, which allowed the entry of very cold Arctic air into the mid-latitudes.

The Coldest Month in Europe

This contributed to Europe experiencing its coldest January since 2010, with an average temperature of -2.34 °C, that is, 1.63 °C below the average for January 1991-2020. Widespread cold conditions were recorded in Fennoscandia, the Baltic States, Eastern Europe, Siberia, and the central and eastern United States. Despite these cold episodes, January's monthly temperatures were above average in much of the planet, including large areas of the Arctic and western North America. January was wetter than normal across much of western, southern and eastern Europe. Intense rainfall caused flooding and associated damage in many regions, including the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, the Western Balkans, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

You can also read: Copernicus predicts that 2025 will be the second warmest year

Conversely, drier-than-normal conditions were observed across a wide region of central Europe, extending northeast through the Baltic states to Finland and parts of western Russia, as well as in Scandinavia and Iceland. The warmest anomalies occurred in the Arctic, especially in much of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Baffin Bay, Greenland, and the far eastern part of Russia. Temperatures above average were also recorded in southern South America, northern Africa, central Asia, and most of Australia and Antarctica.

Heat in the Southern Hemisphere

In the southern hemisphere, record heat fueled extreme conditions, including wildfires that intensified dramatically in the second half of January, as highlighted by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). Among them were intense fires that caused fatalities in Australia, Chile, and Patagonia. The heavy rains in southern Africa during the last week of the month caused severe flooding, especially in Mozambique, with a catastrophic impact on lives and livelihoods. C3S's strategic climate officer, Samantha Burgess, pointed out that January "offered a stark reminder that the climate system can, at times, simultaneously generate very cold weather in one region and extreme heat in another." "As human activities continue to drive long-term warming, these recent events highlight that resilience and adaptation to increasing extreme phenomena are key to preparing society for greater climate risk in the future," he noted.