The NASA GISS data for surface temperatures of the planet Earth are in for February, and February was warm. The anomaly value was 79, which means 0.79 degrees C above a the baseline NASA uses (1951-1980). So, while it looks like the planet has warmed by a about 8 tenths of a degree, since warming started well before 1880, it is really more like a whole degree or more. Depending on what you know and don’t know about how climate works, that may seem like a lot or a little. Trust me, it is a lot.

Most interestingly, the last 12 months were the warmest 12 months in the NSAS GISS database (you’ll remember that 2014 was the warmest year in that database as well as other). This continues an upward trend of temperatures that we expect with global warming.

February 2015 was the seventh warmest month in the entire GISS record, which goes back to 1880. All of the warmest months have been recent. February 2015 was the second warmest February in that record.

We are not going to know about March officially for another month (obviously!), but indications are that March has been warm and will continue to be warm, so I don’t see this trend turning around.

If you want a higher resolution version of this graphic, click here, then click through to the original file.

Here is a version of the above graph without the trendline:

Again, go HERE to get a higher resolution version (Scienceblogs is very efficient at scaling down graphics!).