While it will be a week or so before the US-calculated global temperature records are released, the Europeans have already produced their global version of the temperature map for January 2020. It shows the very warm conditions in Europe and the eastern US and the very cold conditions in Alaska as the polar vortex this winter trapped the coldest air near the North Pole. You can read more about the global climate from the perspective of our friends across the Atlantic at https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-january-2020. It will be interesting to see how their map compares to the one put out by NCEI in a week or two.
