This past January has been declared the world’s warmest January on record, and has left scientists with only further worries about the future of our planet.

The first month of 2025 was warmer than the previous January by nearly 0.1C, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s Earth observation programme. This came as a surprise to scientists, who had predicted January to be slightly cooler than the previous year’s.

January 2024 was unusually warm after there was a shift away from natural weather patterns, known as El Niño, in the Pacific. The result was warmer sea surface temperatures, which released extra heat into the atmosphere and raised global temperatures. The opposing La Niña phase of this year, which is mean to provide a cooling effect, is currently weak, however, with Copernicus suggesting that higher temperatures in the Pacific indicate a stalling of the cooling effect.

“This is what makes it a bit of a surprise: you’re not seeing this cooling effect, or temporary brake at least, on the global temperature that we were expecting to see,” said Julien Nicolas, a climate scientist at Copernicus.

The delayed La Niña phase made this January 1.75C warmer than January temperatures from the late nineteenth century. That period is considered to be the beginning of global warming due to the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, scientists are concerned that this January is now the eighteenth month of the past nineteen to record global-average surface temperatures above 1.5C from preindustrial levels.

Climate activists are similarly worried about world leaders’ dedication to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In this, 196 parties pledged to try to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 1.5C. Although this is being based on long-term multidecadal warming and not short-term monthly temperatures, this recent trend of record-breaking warm months is an indicator that we are approaching a critical limit.

Following this warmest January on record, scientists do not predict that 2025 will be warmer than 2024, the world’s hottest year on record. However, this is not to say that they are optimistic either.

A survey of the world’s top climate scientists, conducted by the Guardian in May 2024, revealed that almost 80% of them believed that the world would fail to meet the 1.5C target from the Paris Agreement, resulting in catastrophic events for humanity.

With every degree of warming above 1.5C increases the extremity and likelihood of weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, heavy rainfall, and droughts. The consequences of such a hot January has already been observed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service: they found wetter-than-average conditions in eastern Australia and drier-than-average conditions in other parts of the country, while arctic sea ice hit a monthly record low.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service is committed to monitoring ocean temperatures for any other pattern changes, considering that sea-surface temperatures of the past two years have been exceptionally warm.

However, considering all the measurements and records the EU monitor has used – including from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations, as well as other sources of climate data, such as ice cores, tree rings, and coral skeletons – scientists predict that this current period is likely to be the warmest the planet has been in 125,000 years.

Featured image: US Fish and Wildlife Headquarters via Flickr