Earth just experienced its warmest January on record
Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — It may have been a frigid January for much of the U.S., but that didn’t stop the planet from breaking another temperature record.
Earth just experienced its warmest January on record, according to data analyzed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Despite a record-breaking snowfall in the south, persistent cold temperatures across the northeast and an emerging La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean, which is supposed to cool things down, January 2025 was still warmer than any previous start to the year in the organization’s dataset going back to 1940.
The average surface air temperature was 55.81 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1991-2020 average for the month of January. It also makes the global average temperature over the past 12 months 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.
For context, the Paris Agreement — which President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from last month — set 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit as a ceiling to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Similarly, global daily sea surface temperatures across most of the world’s oceans remain well above average and registered as the second-highest January value on record, just behind 2024.
Last month’s temperature was unprecedented compared to similar global climate cycles in the past, where temperatures dropped with El Niño long gone and La Niña conditions in place.
The increase’s magnitude and persistence have shocked many climate experts, leaving them somewhat puzzled about what else could be behind the remarkable rise.
In addition to human-amplified climate change and natural global climate cycles, a growing amount of research suggests that a decrease in atmospheric aerosols could be a significant contributor to the rapid warming.
Atmospheric aerosols are tiny particles that reflect sunlight into space and reduce global temperatures. However, their concentrations have greatly diminished due to international efforts to reduce air pollution in recent decades. Now, more sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface, creating a heating effect.
For decades, we’ve been removing aerosols from our air without fully realizing the potential cascading effects of these actions.
To help solve this puzzle, climate scientists are eagerly awaiting the first batch of operational data from NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite, PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem), launched nearly a year ago. This data will provide more insight into how various atmospheric aerosols behave and interact with each other.
(WASHINGTON) — The first flight carrying “high-threat” migrants to Guantanamo Bay arrived Tuesday evening, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
The C-17 plane took off from El Paso, Texas, and landed landed at 7:20 p.m. Eastern time, according to U.S. Transportation Command.
The 10 people on the flight were suspected members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The migrants, however, will not be co-located with existing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have the primary guard of them.
“These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Defense Department said in a Wednesday statement, calling the detention of these migrants at Guantanamo Bay a “temporary measure.” “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 directing the secretaries of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity” to house migrants without legal status living in the United States. The Migrant Operations Center is separate from the high-security prison facility that has been used to hold al Qaeda detainees.
“There’s a lot of space to accommodate a lot of people,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “So we’re going to use it.
“The migrants are rough, but we have some bad ones, too,” he added. “I’d like to get them out. It would be all subject to the laws of our land, and we’re looking at that to see if we can.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the flights carrying migrants to Guantanamo Bay were underway Tuesday morning, saying on Fox News, “Trump, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are already delivering on this promise to utilize that capacity at Gitmo for illegal criminals who have broken our nation’s immigration laws and then have further committed heinous crimes against lawful American citizens here at home.”
While Trump has said the United States will work to prepare the base to hold 30,000 migrants awaiting processing to return to their home countries, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Guantanamo Bay’s high-security prison facility could house “the worst of the worst” criminals being deported.
“Where are you going to put Tren de Aragua before you send them all the way back?” Hegseth asked. “How about a maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space?”
He called the base “the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country,” including for “hardened criminals.”
“President @realdonaldtrump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on Tuesday. It is unclear what charges the migrants on the plane face.
“Due process will be followed, and having facilities at Guantánamo Bay will be an asset to us and the fact that we’ll have the capacity to continue to do there what we’ve always done. We’ve always had a presence of illegal immigrants there who have been detained — we’re just building out some capacity,” Noem told NBC News on Sunday. “We appreciate the partnership of the DoD in getting that up to the level that it needs to get to in order to facilitate this repatriation of people back to their countries.”
She added that it is “not the plan” to have migrants stay at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.
As of Monday, there were about 300 service members supporting the immigrant holding operations at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, according to U.S. Southern Command. U.S. officials told ABC News that as many as 200 more Marines are expected to arrive in waves.
The Defense Department posted that the troops are at Guantanamo Bay “to prepare to expand the Migrant Operations Center” to house up to the 30,000 migrants temporarily, separate from the maximum-security prison.
“As we identify criminal illegals in our country, the military is leaning forward to help with moving them out to their home countries or someone else in the interim,” Hegseth said on Jan. 31. “Now if … they can’t go somewhere right away, they can go to Guantanamo Bay.”
Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, told ABC News’ Phil Lipof on Jan. 29 that a “big challenge” of holding migrants at Guantanamo Bay is the large number Trump has suggested.
“I don’t know that they have the capacity for that,” said Greenberg, who noted that “in the old days and the ’90s, I think they held 21,000 at the most.”
She added that the base has long held refugees and migrants, including in the Biden administration, though in much smaller numbers, and has typically been used for those intercepted at sea rather than to hold migrants flown in from the continental U.S.
However, Greenberg noted that the reports from those who have spent time at Guantanamo Bay are “not good.”
“There was a report released in September by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which sort of detailed the conditions that migrants are held in currently at Guantanamo, which included unsanitary conditions, mistreatment, not to mention this sort of fuzzy legal status,” she said.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — As South Korea navigates a path forward after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law order last week, the nation’s political parties are still wrangling over whether to impeach him for the shocking move even as the president maintains it was a “highly political decision.”
Yoon could face a second impeachment vote on Saturday after a first impeachment vote over the weekend ended with lawmakers from the ruling People Power Party walking out before the vote.
The public reaction has been complex and varied, reflecting the deep political, social, and generational divides in South Korea. But overall there is a mass consensus that putting the country under martial law was an inexcusable action, no matter what motivated the president to do so.
“It was an unthinkable, unimaginable situation,” Seo Jungkun, a professor at Kyunghee University in Seoul, told ABC News.
“President Yoon attempted to suspend the functions of the national assembly. He ordered the removal of lawmakers, therefore he could be charged with treason,” Seo explained, referring to a testimony by Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-geun, who oversaw the special forces dispatched to the National Assembly on the night of the martial law declaration.
Under South Korea’s constitution, if a sitting president is accused of insurrection, the police have the authority to arrest him while he is still in office.
Yoon vowed to “fight until the last moment” in an unexpected speech on Thursday and said that he had never intended to disrupt the “constitutional order” when he ordered hundreds of troops into the National Assembly on Dec. 3.
“My purpose was to inform the public about the colossal group of opposition parties’ heinous anti-state behavior,” Yoon said.
Yoon listed numerous grievances against opposition lawmakers in an effort to justify his actions. He claimed they had slashed funding for initiatives to revitalize the much-needed South Korean nuclear power sector and to combat drug traffickers, criminals, and foreign spies, including North Korea-led provocations.
The opposition Democratic Party stripped the National Intelligence Service of its decades long anti-espionage investigative power early this year, handing over that authority to the police which many agree are not capable of investigating North Korean provocations.
Yoon’s government has been at a deadlock since assuming power in 2022 due to the opposition’s continuous impeachment attempts targeting key members of his administration.
The Democratic Party has also impeached numerous prosecutors and judges involved in legal cases in which their party leader, Lee Jae-myung, had been personally accused while he served as mayor and governor. Lee is currently undergoing five trials for criminal charges such as corruption and bribery, subornation, and the illegal transfer of funds to North Korea.
“Yes, the opposition put pressure on the government in an unprecedented manner. But it was within the bounds of law and authority,” Professor Kang Won-taek of Seoul National University said, saying the measures were simply politics.
Many analysts in Seoul agree that Lee’s time had been ticking because if he were to be sentenced with any of these charges, he would be losing eligibility to run for presidency, which is why the opposition is pressing hard at full speed now. Once elected president, Lee would be immune from criminal prosecution by law.
The majority Democratic Party introduced a second motion to impeach the president on Thursday, following up on their warning that they will push for impeachment every week until it passes. Lawmaker Kim Min-seok of the Democratic Party referred to President Yoon’s speech as a “declaration of war against the nation,” saying he is delusional.
Yoon faces a deeply divided faction even within his own ruling party. The leader of the People Power Party, Han Dong-Hoon, is now in favor of impeachment.
“There is no other way,” Han said as other ruling party lawmakers shouted angrily that impeachment is only a personal opinion of Han’s and that “it is too early to define it as insurrection.” All except three ruling party lawmakers shunned the impeachment vote last Saturday by refusing to vote, but the upcoming vote is expected to be a close call.
If Yoon is impeached on Saturday he will be immediately suspended, but the Constitutional Court could take up to six months to decide whether to reinstate or remove the president.
Impeachment requires the presence of at least seven judges to hear the case and the agreement of two-thirds of the Constitutional Court judges. Currently, the Constitutional Court has only six members.
“Realistically I believe the case will be dismissed if the Constitutional Court remains as is with six judges,” Dr. Lee Junhan of Incheon National University told ABC News. Based on past cases, the judges are likely to rule that there were problematic actions but not precisely unconstitutional, which will lead to no impeachment, he said. “And this is what the president is aiming for.”
