February 2017 was the second warmest February in 137 years of modern record-keeping, scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space…
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February 2017 was the second warmest February in 137 years of modern record-keeping, scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York have found.
Last month was 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean February temperature from 1951-1980, according to the monthly analysis of global temperatures by the GISS team.
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Overall, February 2016 was the hottest ever on record, at 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the February mean temperature, NASA said in a statement on Wednesday.
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February 2017's temperature was 0.20 degree Celsius cooler than February 2016.
The monthly analysis is assembled from publicly available data acquired by about 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research stations.
The modern global temperature record begins around 1880 because previous observations did not cover enough of the planet.
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