The Crisis Report — 57

Let me present a “worst case” climate scenario to you.

For simplicity there are only 3 years shown here: 2023 (GREY), 2024 (ORANGE), and 2025 (RED). 2023 was on average +1.5°C over baseline. 2024 was hotter than 2023 and finished up +1.6°C over baseline. 2025 has started +1.7°C over baseline for the month of January. During a La Nina ocean pattern.

The SCARIEST aspect of this scenario is how plausible it could be.

Consider the state of the world.

January 2025: warmest January and lowest Arctic sea ice extent for the month

January 2025 was the 18th month in a 19-month period with a global-average surface air temperature exceeding 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.

This chart shows GMST averages for the month of January, going back to 1979. Compared to the 1850–1900 average, designated as the pre-industrial reference period, January 2025 was 1.75ºC warmer than the average for the month.

Here’s a slightly different way to “see” what this data set tells us.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) monthly bulletin for January 2025 the average global surface temperature in the ERA5 reanalysis dataset was 13.23ºC or +0.79ºC above the climatological average for January for the period 1991–2020. Compared to the 1850–1900 average, designated as the pre-industrial reference period, January 2025 was +1.75ºC warmer than the average for the month.