Washington——

This winter has been the warmest on record for the continental United States, data showed on Friday, the latest sign that the world is heading toward unprecedented times due to the climate crisis.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that from December 2023 to February 2024, the average temperature in the lower 48 states of the United States was 3.1 degrees Celsius, which is the highest recorded since the 1890s.

For the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, that’s 3 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. The second warmest winter was in 2016 with an average temperature of 2.7 degrees Celsius, while the coldest winter on record was in 1979 with a frigid -3 degrees Celsius.

Eight states in the upper Midwest, Great Lakes region and Northeast experienced their warmest winter on record, in part due to an El Niño weather pattern.

On Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced that the state has made federal funds available to businesses affected by the snowfall, “from skiing and snowshoeing to winter festivals.”

The hot weather lasted throughout February. Data show that the average temperature in the continental United States (excluding Hawaii, Alaska and offshore areas) this month was 5.1 degrees Celsius, the third highest on record.

wildfires, droughts and floods

The Smokehouse Creek wildfire started on February 26 and became the largest fire in Texas history, burning more than 400,000 acres in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma, the agency said.

Continued warmth has caused a steady decline in ice cover in the Great Lakes, reaching an all-time low of 2.7% on February 11, when ice cover typically peaks.

“We have crossed a threshold with record-low ice cover extent across the Great Lakes,” Brian Morozka, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Society, said in a recent statement.

The lack of ice affects everything from businesses that rely on outdoor sports to fish that use ice to protect themselves from predators during the spawning season.

It also makes shorelines more susceptible to erosion, increasing potential damage to coastal infrastructure.

February also ranks as the third driest month on record, but while some areas experienced drought, unusual atmospheric patterns brought heavy rain and snow to parts of the West, resulting in strong winds, Floods, landslides and power outages. .

President Joe Biden called global warming a “climate crisis,” dropped the term “climate change,” and praised the climate infrastructure law he signed during his State of the Union address Thursday night.

global record

Last month was the world’s hottest February on record and the ninth consecutive month of record high temperatures, the European climate monitoring agency said earlier this week.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last month that between February 2023 and January 2024, for the first time, the Earth will experience 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than in the pre-industrial era.

The United Nations climate panel has warned that the global temperature rise target of 1.5 degrees Celsius by the early 2030s may collapse. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius is considered crucial to avoid a long-term global climate catastrophe.

Earth-heating emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, continue to rise, and scientists say emissions need to be cut by nearly half this decade.

At last year’s U.N. climate talks in Dubai, countries agreed to triple global renewable energy capacity within a decade and “move away” from fossil fuels, but the deal lacked details and time commitments.

The United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but its emissions account for about one-fifth of global historical emissions since 1850, with China ranking second.

The World Meteorological Organization says La Niña (which, unlike El Niño, lowers global temperatures) is likely to develop later this year, with neutral conditions (neither El Niño nor La Niña) occurring from April to June. The probability is 80%.