In their global climate summary for February 2016, released earlier this week, NOAA confirmed what was already reported by NASA earlier this month–February 2016 was the warmest ever on record by a significant fraction. The winter months of Dec-Feb also set a new record.
Even though El Niño contributed to the warming, the regions with the highest anomalies were high in the Arctic, where land and sea ice are rapidly being displaced by bare ground and open ocean. In fact, the anomalies there have been so large that the map below can’t really show how much the anomalies have been since the contours stop at 5 degrees above average.
As you can imagine, there have been many stories about this.
NOAA’s report: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201602
Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog: https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/noaa-agrees-february-2016-was-earths-warmest-month-in-recorded-histo
AP’s BigStory blog from Seth Borenstein: https://bigstory.ap.org/article/e56b198cc97540e394bbbad28b907c0b/beyond-record-hot-february-was-astronomical-and-strange
