The global picture is getting hotter and it is showing locally with a winter that seems like it’s on pause.
Let’s look at the big picture first
NOAA released records Tuesday showing how the planet has been warmer than average for the last 527 months in a row.
The alarming trend is not fading as the planet begins 2023 with January ranking as the seventh-warmest January in 174 years.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, reported the rise was 1.57 degrees above average records that date back to 1880.
The agency combines the average global temperature of both ocean surface and land measurements.
The local view is a mild winter in Jacksonville
After December’s long freeze, January brought a warm spell putting many cities including Arlington, JAX International and Brunswick in the top 10 warmest January months.
Climate change is impacting us locally
Jacksonville has not seen a freeze since the last week in January placing our average temperature in February over 5°F warmer than normal. Even with four freezes in January, last month’s average was 4.2° warmer than the city’s normal average of 58°.
Over the last 30 years in Jacksonville, average mean temperatures have outnumbered cooler years. Only 11 have been below average and the pace of those cooler years has been decreasing. The last time the city had a year lower than the 30-year average of 68.6° was 2014 while they were more frequent prior to 2010.
Our warmth is shared with the nation which just experienced its sixth-warmest January. Seven northeastern states placed their warmest January on record, and 19 other states recorded a top-ten warmest January.
The heating impacts are currently being seen around the world.
New York didn’t get its first snow of the season until Feb. 1, 2023, marking the longest snowless streak since records began in 1869.
Antarctic sea ice is the lowest on record with open ocean replacing icecaps and the northern Arctic sea ice extent in January was the third lowest on record.
The water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have warmed twice as much compared to the world’s oceans since 1970. The surface temperature increased by approximately 1.8°̊F between 1970 and 2020. Hotter water is known to produce stronger hurricanes.
Temperatures were above average throughout most of Europe and the Arctic, much of Africa and northern and eastern North America and across parts of southern South America and northwestern, central and southeastern Asia. Europe saw its warmest January on record, North America had its fifth-warmest January on record and Africa had its sixth warmest.