This makes it the eighth straight month in a row that is the warmest on record for the respective month of the year. January 2024 saw an average surface air temperature of 13.14°C, which was 0.70°C above the 1991-2020 average for January and 0.12°C above the temperature of the previous warmest January, in 2020.
Taken as a whole, the global mean temperature for the past 12 months (Feb 2023 – Jan 2024) is actually the highest on record. The readings from C3S show that the temperature was 0.64°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.52°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.
And it isn’t just the case that surface air temperature is getting warmer. In fact, the average global sea surface temperature also reached a record of 20.97°C in January. That is 0.26°C warmer than the previous recorded warmest January in 2016. And February looks on course to carry on that trend:
Climate change has not been a key issue for markets in general since gaining popularity. However, as the times change more quickly, we could see global conditions accelerate to impact markets more over the coming years. Here’s a neat pictorial by the IMF in trying to explain the correlation:
