Averages over the area north of 66 ° N show the month to be, by a small margin, the warmest February on record for the European sector of the Arctic (20W to 60E, 66N to 90N), and the second most
anomalously warm month (after January 2016) for the Arctic as a whole.
In both the NASA and NOAA records, January and February were both record warm, with February besting January as the most
anomalously warm month ever recorded, going back 135 years.
The U.S. average for February was 7.3 °F above normal, the fifth-most
anomalously warm month ever recorded.
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its global temperature data, which confirmed what NASA numbers had already shown: This February was the warmest February on record and the most
anomalously warm month in more than 100 years of record - keeping.
This January was the warmest January on record by a large margin while also claiming the title of most
anomalously warm month in 135 years of record keeping.
One particularly notable aspect of last month's heat was that it beat out January as the most
anomalously warm month on record by a solid 0.36 °F (0.2 °C).
It was also the most
anomalously warm month Earth has seen in 135 years of NASA record keeping, continuing an astonishing recent streak that could see 2016 set a new record for hottest year.
That was 0.36 °F (0.2 °C) lower than February 2016, which ranks as the most
anomalously warm month in NASA's global temperature records, which go back 137 years.
That incredible warmth helped contribute to January and February successively setting the record for the most
anomalously warm months globally in more than 130 years of record keeping.
Not exact matches
If the northern summer
months are as
anomalously warm as February, the planet will temporarily rise 1.5 °C above pre-industrial for a
month or two.
As you can see from all three global datasets (CRU, NOAA and Nasa) all the
months this year for which the data has so far been collated (January - October) were
anomalously warm.
# 96 prokaryotes — Quoting from the article:»
Anomalously low sea ice during summer exposes darker (i.e., low albedo) ocean water to sunlight, producing strong Arctic
warming via direct radiative impacts and anomalous latent and sensible heat fluxes that persist into the winter
months.