January 2026 began with extreme weather variations in both the northern and southern hemispheres. While it wasn’t a record-breaking month, it ranked as the fifth warmest January ever recorded. According to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, this January was 0.28 degrees Celsius cooler than last year, which marked the hottest January on record. The global average temperature for January 2026 was recorded at 12.95 degrees Celsius, which is 0.51 degrees above the historical average from 1991 to 2020 and 1.47 degrees warmer than the baseline used to define pre-industrial levels from 1850 to 1900.