Globally, January Was Second Hottest On Record

Hot times were had by almost all around the world in January, 2015.  

The trend line in global January temperatures
since about the 1880s. From NCDC.  

The third in a series of global climate assessments came out today. The closely-watched National Climatic Data Center report on January, 2015 shows the month was the second hottest on record for the Earth as a whole.

Yes, yes, I know it was chilly in New England in January and even more brutally cold in parts of the United States in February, but we're not talking about a tiny corner of the world here. We're talking about the whole thing.

The data center said January, 2015 was the second hottest on record, at least since the 1880s. Only January, 2007 was warmer. 

Says the NCDC:

"During January, 2015, record warmth was observed in parts of the Gulf of Alaska, the eastern Pacific off the coastal United States, regions of the equatorial western Pacific and the Pacific waters to the east of Australia, large areas of the western Atlantic and some isolated regions of the eastern Atlantic near the southwestern African coast."

As I noted earlier this week, NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency figured January, 2015 was the first or second hottest on record for the globe.

Also as I said earlier this week, there's no reason to think February, 2015 is going to be chilly for the Earth as a whole, despite the worst cold wave in decades now hitting the eastern half of the United States.   

Temperatures across the globe
relative to normal on Thursday. Eastern U.S and part of
southern Canada is very cold most of the rest
of the world quite warm.  

As you can see on the map, part of the United States is indeed extremely cold relative to average this week, but vast parts of the world are warmer than normal, more than making up for the U.S. chill. 

Click on the map to make it bigger and easier to read.

Note the extreme warmth near Mongolia in the central North Atlantic Ocean, parts of eastern Europe, northwestern Canada and the southwestern United States. 

The, um, climate expert Donald Trump Tweeted today that it was 25 below in parts of the U.S. and New England is buried in snow, so

therefore global warming ain't happening. 

The smart aleck in me wishes he was remote parts of Mongolia, enjoying the record heat over there.