The February temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.2°C above the 20th century average. It was the highest departure from average among all 1,646 months on record. The average Arctic sea ice extent for February was 450,000 square miles (7.54 percent) below the 1981-2010 average.
The December-February temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.13°C above the 20th century average. This was the highest for December-February in the 1880-2016 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.29°C.