Wunderground.com - 2/22/12, Dr. Jeff Masters
Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for January 2013, the 9th warmest January for the globe since record keeping began in 1880. Colder than average conditions occurred in the Western U.S., northern Canada, and northern Russia. The Southern Hemisphere was record warm over land for the second month in a row, with record high monthly temperatures observed over northeastern Brazil, much of southern Africa, and northern and central Australia. No land areas in the Southern Hemisphere were cooler than average. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
January 2013 was the globe's 9th warmest January since records began in 1880, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Thursday. January 2013 global land temperatures were the 13th warmest on record, and global ocean temperatures were the 8th warmest on record. January 2013 was the 335th consecutive month with global temperatures warmer than the 20th century average and the 37th straight warmer-than-average January.
The last time Earth had a below-average January global temperature was in 1976, and the last below-average month of any kind was February 1985, so no one under the age of 28 has ever seen a month with below-average global temperatures. Global satellite-measured temperatures in January 2013 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were 4th or 2nd warmest in the 35-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), respectively. The Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during January 2013 was the sixth largest on record for the month, and marked the sixth consecutive January with above-average snow cover for the hemisphere.
Wunderground's weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, has a comprehensive post on the notable weather events of January 2013 in his January 2013 Global Weather Extremes Summary. The most extreme weather on the planet in January occurred in Australia, where the nationally-averaged monthly maximum temperature was the highest ever recorded. Australia also suffered record rains and flooding along the east coast due to the remains of Tropical Cyclone Oswald. Damage from the flooding totaled $2.5 billion, according to AON Benfield. One other billion-dollar weather disaster occurred in January--flooding in Indonesia that cost $3.3 billion and took 41 lives. As much as 300 millimeters (12 inches) of precipitation fell over a two-week period.
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