A world’s worldwide pack, still at the highest global temperatures: after 2024 and its litany of records and climatic disasters, winter 2025 still illustrates the global warming by pursuing more than two years of heat observations at historical levels.
In February, the cumulative surface of the ice floe around the two poles reached a new historic minimum, and the three months corresponding to the winter of the northern hemisphere (December-February) were almost as hot as last year’s record, according to the monthly bulletin published Thursday, March 6 by the European Copernicus observatory.
“February 2025 is in line with record or almost record temperatures observed in the past two years” Under the effect of global warming, underlines in a press release Samantha Burgess, of the European Center for Middle Term Meteorological Forecasts (ECMWF). “One of the consequences of a warmer world is the melting of sea ice” driving “The world extent of the ice floe at a historic minimum”she adds.
Record Fonte of the Arctic
The ice floe naturally melts summer (in Antarctica at the moment) and reforms winter (Arctic), but in now declining proportions. February 7, “A lower record has been reached concerning the cumulative ice floe surface” Around the Arctic and Antarctica, indicates Copernicus.
This melting of ice is particularly marked in the Arctic. The Bank of Antarctica, without breaking the absolute record, is nevertheless 26 % less important than its seasonal average in the heart of the southern summer. The annual minimum could have been reached in late February, according to Copernicus, and “If this is confirmed, it would be the lowest minimum minimum recorded by satellites”.
The planet begins a third year in a row with historically high temperatures, after 2024 became the hottest year ever measured, breaking the 2023 record.
The climatologists expected that the exceptional global temperatures for two years fade after the end of the cycle of the El Niño phenomenon, synonymous with additional warming, which had reached its peak in January 2024. But the thermometer continues to beat or brush the records.
Third months of February the hottest of the Annals
Even if February 2025 is only the third warmer month of February of the annals, it remains extraordinary, warmer of 1.5 ° C compared to the pre -industrial level, underlines Copernicus.
This level appears in the Paris Agreement to avoid the multiplication of global climate disasters. According to the UN, the world is on the way to cross this threshold in the early 2030s. But recent studies suggest that this step could be exceeded before the end of this decade.
Bulletin
“Human warmth”
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February was marked in particular by major fires in Argentina and several cyclones in southeast Africa and the South Pacific.
The world, high averages, hide strong contrasts. A large part of the Arctic, the Alps and the Himalayas, as well as Scandinavia, northern Chile and Argentina, Mexico, India or Florida have experienced very hot temperatures for a month of February. On the other hand, an icy wave was observed in the west of the United States, and it has also been cold in Turkey, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, as well as in a large part of East Asia.
The oceans remain abnormally hot too. The temperature on the surface of the seas was the second highest ever recorded in February, with 20.88 ° C on a global average. The oceans, crucial climate regulators and carbon wells, store more than 90 % of the excess heat caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of humanity.
