Warm January took planet close to limit

The world edged perilously close last month to the global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement, with January 2026 officially now in the record books as one of the warmest Januaries ever.

Despite the fact that large parts of Europe and North America were hit with unusually fierce cold snaps last month, the rest of the world more than offset the plunging mercury in those locations, with the Southern Hemisphere sweltering through extreme heat and plagued by many wildfires and floods.

Overall, January was 1.47 C warmer than a typical January was before the industrial age began, which means it was only 0.03 C less than the maximum target threshold of 1.5 C set by 195 nations in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement, which was the culmination of the COP21 climate conference.

Worldwide, the average surface air temperature for January was 12.95 C, which was 0.51 C higher than the average temperature recorded for the month between 1991 and 2020.

The warmest January on record was recorded last year and was only 0.28 C warmer than January 2026.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, or C3S, data shows January 2026 was the fifth-warmest January on record. Strangely, it was not an unusually warm month for Europe but actually the coldest January since 2010, with an average temperature of -2.34 C, some 1.63 C less than the average for the month in Europe during the period from 1991 to 2020.

Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said the partially offsetting weather extremes last month show how complicated the picture has become, and how it is important for nations to invest in preparing for all sorts of weather-related scenarios.

"January 2026 delivered a stark reminder that the climate system can sometimes simultaneously deliver very cold weather in one region, and extreme heat in another," she said. "While human activities continue to drive long-term warming, these recent events highlight that resilience and adaptation to increasing extremes are key to prepare society for heightened climate risk in the future."

The C3S data shows ocean temperatures were unusually high, and that sea ice has continued to melt around both the North Pole and South Pole. The report says sea surface temperatures were, on average, 20.68 C during January, which was the fourth-warmest on record for the month.

The C3S data is compiled each month from observations made by aircraft, satellites, ships, and weather stations and is fed into computer modeling and compared to pre-industrial levels and recent levels.

Overall, the planet is on an extended run of warming conditions attributable to human activity, with 2024 the warmest year ever recorded, 2023 the second-warmest, and 2025 the third.