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https://earth.org/world-temperatures-break-record-for-ninth-month-straight-in-february-eus-climate-service-says/

“Average surface temperatures in February were 0.81C higher than the 1991-2020 average. and 1.77C above pre-industrial levels.

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With an average temperature of 13.54C, February 2024 was the hottest February ever recorded globally, breaking the previous record set in 2016 by 0.12C, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has announced.”

As noted by Myron Hedderson, there is a summary report available that states February 2024 was "third warmest". On behalf of the creator, who appears inactive, I am going to resolve this No.

@c0m has not been active lately, it looks like the scheduled report release date/time is 8 March at 11:00am Eastern. We could set trading to close at exactly that time, leave it where it is (4 hours from now), or leave trading open through the expected release date. Any strong opinions? It looks like it was intended to remain open until the report released based on the description.

9.06 but probably too late

@ChristopherRandles Yeah, it's going to be hard to pass even 5.0, and the target seems to be 5.23. There is an adjustment factor when it goes from prelim to scaled though, so never say never.

@Eliza Woo, that was remarkably close! Made it past 5.0 looks like (scaled is out now, but when I calculate the average of those numbers using Excel's AVERAGE() function it comes out to 5.000345, whereas in the national rankings the Feb figure is 5.03, so I'm not sure why the discrepancy).

Looking at the prelim data through 23 February, the average seems to be 4.21.

If the average for the last 6 days is 8 degrees, that would pull the total average to 5.0. If the average for the last 6 days is 9 degrees, it pulls the overall to 5.2, which would be extremely close to the record. Both 5.0 and 5.2 are within range of being the hottest on record, after the change from prelim to scaled data.

However. The hottest day so far the entire month is 7.41 and that is the only day above 7. This would require six consecutive days hotter than the hottest one yet.

It looks like there is a large mass of cold air due to invade from Canada and swoop down into the Midwest over the next 2-3 days. Even if there are a couple 7+ average days for the 24th, 25th, 26th, it looks like the 28th and 29th might be well below 7. No holders should feel pretty happy here I think.

Here's a link to an info source @Eliza pointed me to last month: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/nclimgrid-daily/access/averages/2024/, which lists the daily (preliminary) temperature numbers for the US as soon as they come out. The file you want is tavg-202402-cns-prelim.csv.

And my understanding is that the number to beat is an average of 5.23, per this: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/rankings/110/tavg/195402

@equinoxhq Yep, I believe all that is correct!

Note that the tavg-202402-cns-prelim is PRELIMINARY and it will be "adjusted" a few days into March to become the final result ("scaled"). They scale the values so it matches some other thing, basically. It might result in a shift of 0 to 0.5C, either direction. So if the figure is really close to the max, be careful, but if it's multiple degrees in the safe range, don't sweat it too much.

@Eliza Looks like we would need to average over 7 for the rest of the month. I believe there is a cold air pocket that is going to settle in over the Rockies in the next few days.

With just 3 days of data, February's average is 4C higher than the entire month of February 2023's average. 🤔 Sold some No shares.

@Eliza And yet...

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/

These ^ do sometimes flip, but I have learned a lesson from last month 😆

@equinoxhq Agreed, I consulted both the 8-14 day and full February charts before adjusting my position. They don't update this monthly one mid-month, but it is pretty happily saying "We think most of the month is going to be warm most everywhere."

Just like how the cold spell in January had a large impact on the final result, the warm spell here at the start of February is going to have an impact on the full month results.

Note that the warmest February on record is incredibly old, from 1954 (41.41F / 5.23C), but 2017 came extremely close (41.18F / 5.1C). As of right now, the nclimgrid-daily data through 4 February shows an average of 5.89C, so we are on a record hottest pace at this point. It might change later, but that's where we are so far.

@Eliza Yep, saw 1954, noticed it was really hot. I didn't compare it to recent Februaries, but was curious whether December 2023 was far enough above normal that if a similar anomaly occurred in February, it would beat 1954. Nope, December 2023 was 4.05 above normal for Decembers, and Feb 1954 was 4.23 above normal for Februaries. But maybe it's close enough to be plausible.

The case for Feb being record hot as I see it right now:

• December was record hot in the US and globally, and globally I expect the temperature to be record hot for a few more months and Manifold agrees, and it seems weird to me that the US has been so consistently cooler than the average place over the latter half of 2023. I'm not qualified to have a firm opinion about what's weird in this case, but still.

• Temperatures are coming in hotter than climate models are predicting, so whatever the predictions are a few weeks out, there might be some upside fudge factor, until climate modelers figure out how to adjust their models to account for 2023.

• 2017 almost beat 1954's record (I didn't know that, thanks!)

• First few days of data are on track for this outcome.

  The case against, as I see it now:

• 1954 was really hot, so hot that even a quite hot February 2024 might not beat it.

• The outlook for the month from NOAA doesn't seem strong enough for a record hot month.

• "Things are getting hotter because climate change" is my default expectation, which may be biasing my predictions, so I should adjust accordingly. Similarly for "El Nino makes things hotter during the time when it's active", which apparently is true globally but not necessarily for the United States. So I should take my expectations given all of the other factors listed here and adjust them slightly downward.

Result: A high degree of uncertainty, but I was willing to buy in when the market was lower. Will be a fun one to watch! 😃

@c0m in the title, February is spelled wrong, makes it hard to find this market in search.

@Eliza no month called Februrary in 2024, resolves to NO 🤙

Why is it so high!

@Eliza el nino

@Halfway Are you sure El Niño is correlated with this statistic? The highest February this century was in 2017 but my understanding is 2017 was not an El Niño year. I think 2010 was an El Niño year but that is a very low point for the February average temperature. And 1998 was a strong El Niño year but was actually surpassed by 1999 and 2000 which were not.

My rough understanding is El Niño causes some parts of the US to be warmer and some parts to be colder, so the average temperature will depend on the balance between those zones.

@Eliza rising global temperatures in combination with el nino. You're accurate that there are variations. 2017 and 2018 had high avg. Feb temps, I think the last Feb el nino was 2018. I'm not looking at the data, but the way temps are trending in combo with el nino is why I'd wager this year will be higher.

@Eliza "The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in February 2023 was 36.5°F, which is 2.7°F above average, ranking in the warmest third of the record."

Assessing the U.S. Climate in February 2023

In February, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 36.5°F, which is 2.7°F above the 20th-century average.

@Halfway Right, out of the last 12 months, not a single month has fallen in the top-5 all time US temperature high for that month. Several have been in the top 25%, but none have been a top-5. Even though there have been some global records, it does not seem to be translating into national records.

There's still time for that to change between now and February....