Last month was second warmest February on record: NASA

Washington March 16 (IANS) 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.

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.

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.

--IANS
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