While New England Freezes, Most Of The Rest Of The World Bakes

NASA's assessment of global temperatures in
Janaury show much warmer than normal temperatures
in most of the Arctic and Siberia. Eastern
 Canada in particular was chilly. Add caption

Much of New England is likely to have its coldest February on record, this after a January that was colder than average.

But today, we get confirmation that the rest of the world continues to bake.

The first flurry of monthly reports on the Earth's climate came out today, and we've learned that on a global basis, January was either the warmest or second warmest first month of the year on record.

NASA says January, 2015 on a global basis was the second warmest on record, while the Japan Meteorological Agency says January was the warmest on record.

Each of those two agencies have slightly different methods of taking the Earth's temperature, so the results vary a bit. But the actual temperatures the two agencies measured are extremely close to one another, which is pretty much always the case.

The closely watched National Climate Data Center January assessment of the world's climate is due out later this week.

While New England has been extremely cold in
February, the Intermountain West has been extremely warm.  

It's obviously too soon to tell how warm February is going to be compared to past years, because the month isn't over yet.

But New Englanders shouldn't think this February negates global warming. Even in the hottest months on a global basis a few pockets of the Earth are cooler than normal.

New England will very likely end up being the spot on the Earth that will end the month the coolest on the planet, relative to normal.

Other parts of the planet have so far been extremely warm so far in February compared to normal.

In fact, just in the United States, while parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts have so far been running as much as 16 degrees colder than normal in February, a large chunk of the Intermountain West has been about 16 degrees warmer than normal.

In the last 30 days, cities and towns across the nation tied or set 3,742 daily record high temperatures, says the National Climate Data Center. In that same period, only 222 daily record lows were set, mostly in the Northeast.

Although the number of daily record lows will climb in the next few days and the record highs probably won't change too much, the highs are still handily exceeding the low, at least in the United States.