Hottest January on record pushes 12-month global average temps over 1.5 degree threshold for first time ever

The world just had its hottest year ever recorded, and 2024 has already set a new heat record for the warmest January ever observed, according to the European Union's climate change monitoring service Copernicus. 

The service said that January 2024 had a global average air temperature of 13.14 degrees Celsius, or 55.65 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature was 0.70 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average for the month and 0.12 degrees Celsius above the last warmest January, in 2020. 

It was also 1.66 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month.