The hottest January of history makes scientists surprised

Copernicus climate change agency of the European Union (EU) said that in January 2025, it was hotter than 1.75 degrees Celsius compared to the pre -industrial period, extending the record chain of 2023 and 2024 in the context of Greenhouse gas is released by humans to warm the planet, AFP On February 6 reported. Climate scientists have expected this special warm period to soften after El Nino ended last year and moved to La Nina.

While El Nino heats the ocean surface, La Nina is a cooling temperature of the ocean surface in large areas of the Pacific Tropical Region, accompanied by wind, rain and changes in gas pressure. book. In many places, especially in the tropics, La Nina brings climate effects on the opposite of El Nino, leading to drought in some places and causing heavy rain in other places.

However, the temperature remains at a record or near the record since then, causing scientists to debate other factors that may be pushing up the temperature. They warn that the temperature increases, even if only a small part of 1 degree, also enhances the intensity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves, heavy rain and drought.

In January this year, 0.09 degrees Celsius compared to the previous high level in January 2024 – a significant amplitude for global temperature, climate scientist Julien Nicolas from Copernicus said. “This is a surprise … No cooling effect, or at least temporarily decreased, at global temperatures as we expect,” he said.

This is the first time the temperature recorded during the La Nina period was higher than that during the previous El Nino period, according to expert Stefan Rahmstorf from the University of Potsdam. “This is very worrying – in the past 60 years, all January 25 of the La Nina period was cooler than January of the neighboring years,” he said.

Bill McGuire, climate scientist from College London, commented that it was “amazing and scary” when January still kept a record high heat even though La Nina appeared.

La Nina this year is expected to be weak. Copernicus said the current temperature in some parts of the equatorial Pacific region shows “the slow or stop of the transfer to” this cooling phenomenon. Nicolas thinks it can disappear completely in March.

Scientists agree that burning fossil fuel leads to long -term global warming, and natural climate change can also affect the temperature from year to year. But the natural warm cycles like El Nino cannot fully explain what happens in the atmosphere and the ocean. Therefore, scientists are looking for answers elsewhere.

One theory is that the world’s transition to cleaner fuel in 2020 has increased the warming speed because the sulfur emissions decreased, causing the cloud to reflect less sunlight. Scientists said that the current period is likely the warmest period of the earth who has experienced in 125,000 years.