January 2017 is third warmest month in 137 years: NASA

A group of scientists at Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted a monthly analysis of global temperatures. The analysis marked January 2017 as the third warmest January in 137 years of modern record-keeping.

The result of the analysis was announced on 15 February 2017.

The GISS team assembled the monthly analysis from publicly available data acquired by about 6300 meteorological stations around the world, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research stations.

The modern global temperature record began around 1880 because previous observations did not cover enough of the earth.

Key highlights of the analysis

• Temperature of January 2017 was 0.20 degrees Celsius cooler than the warmest January in 2016. However, it was 0.92 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean January temperature from 1951-1980.

• 2016 was the hottest year on record, at 1.12 degrees Celsius warmer than the January mean temperature. The second hottest was 2007 at 0.96 degrees Celsius warmer.

• It also showed that most of North America and Siberia were much warmer than the 1951-1980 base period. Also, much of the rest of Asia was relatively warm.

About Goddard Institute for Space Studies

• The Goddard Institute for Space Studies is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

• It was established in May 1961 by Robert Jastrow to conduct basic research in space sciences in support of Goddard programs.

• It is located at Columbia University in New York City.

• Research at the institute emphasizes a broad study of Global Change, the natural and anthropogenic changes in our environment that affect the habitability of Mother Earth.