February 2016 was the hottest month in history according to NOAA

[LongTomH]

From Dr. Jeff Masters' blog at Weather Underground: NOAA Agrees: February 2016 Was Earth's Warmest Month in Recorded History:

February 2016 was by far the planet's warmest February since record keeping began in 1880, and was also the warmest month relative to average of any month in the historical record, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Thursday. As discussed here on Sunday, NASA also rated February 2016 as the warmest February as well as the warmest month in recorded history (measured as a departure from average.) In the NOAA database, February 2016 came in a full 0.32°C (0.58°F) warmer than the previous record-holder, February 2015--a truly astounding margin to break an all-time monthly global temperature record by (these records are typically broken by just a few hundredths of a degree.) The five warmest months since 1880 (as measured by departure from average in both the NOAA and NASA databases) were the past five months. The impressive global warmth in recent months is due to the steady build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases due to human activities, plus a spike due to a large amount of heat being released from waters in the Eastern Pacific due to the strong El Niño event there.

February 2016 also marked the tenth consecutive month that the monthly temperature record has been broken and the fifteenth consecutive month (since December 2014) that the monthly global temperature ranked among the three warmest for its respective month in the NOAA database. Global ocean temperatures during February 2016 were the warmest on record, and global land temperatures were the second warmest on record. Global satellite-measured temperatures in February 2016 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the warmest in the 38-year record, according to the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH). This is the fifth consecutive month the UAH database has registered a record monthly high.

The above graph shows the departure from average for February temperatures from 1880 to 2016.

Dr. Jeff Masters is founder of the Weather Underground. His blog posts are an excellent resource for news on Climate Change and associated effects. This post lists the following:

• Arctic sea ice falls to lowest February extent on record
  
• Four billion-dollar weather disasters so far in 2016
  
• Notable global heat and cold marks set for February 2016
  
• Major weather stations that set (not tied) new all-time heat or cold records in February 2016
  
• Four all-time national heat records and one all-time cold record set through mid-March 2016