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January was the hottest ever, per Bloomberg.The latest data from the European Union's climate change monitoring service Copernicus confirms that 2024 has already broken records, marking the hottest January ever recorded.According to Copernicus, the global average air temperature for January 2024 was 13.14 degrees Celsius, or 55.65 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature surpasses the 1991 to 2020 average for the month by 0.70 degrees Celsius and exceeds the previous warmest January, in 2020, by 0.12 degrees Celsius.Moreover, January 2024 was 1.66 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month.Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, emphasized the significance of these findings, stating, "2024 starts with another record-breaking month. Not only is it the warmest January on record, but we have also just experienced a 12-month period of more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period."This announcement follows closely after Copernicus confirmed that 2023 had shattered global heat records, leading to deadly heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires worldwide. The escalating global temperatures contribute to extreme weather events, fueling storms that generate hurricanes and triggering massive precipitation events resulting in flooding in urban areas.Bob Watson, a former chair of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, expressed concern, stating, "This far exceeds anything that is acceptable. Look what's happened this year with only 1.5 degrees Celsius: We've seen floods, we've seen droughts, we've seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world, and we're starting to see less agricultural productivity and some problems with water quality and quantity."A landmark U.N. report from 2018 warned that the risks of extreme consequences of climate change would significantly increase if global warming surpassed the 1.5-degree threshold. The primary cause of this warming is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, primarily emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.