Last year set a rather notable record for the warmest global temperatures, as a strong El Niño bumped up a steady trend of greenhouse warming to push the temperatures well above the previous record. Our report on the temperature record, however, noted that it was likely to be short lived. The El Niño that drove it wasn't going to switch off at the end of the calendar year, and additional time would allow the heat it was pushing into the atmosphere to spread more widely across the globe. As a result, some observers were predicting that 2016 would be even hotter.

So far, those predictions seem to be spot on. Over the weekend, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies released its figures for the month of February, which registered as a startling 1.35°C above the baseline period (1951-1980). The previous monthly record had been 1.14°C; last year's annual record was a paltry 0.84°C.

The graph above shows data from a period that contains all of the 15 warmest years in the instrumental record. The February reading, at the far right, provides some indication on how much of a radical departure this warming is.

Prior to last October, the GISS data had never gone a full degree C above the baseline. February marks the fifth month in a row that it has. There hasn't been a month below that baseline since 1992. It's also notable that the baseline period is well after the planet had started warming from its pre-industrial temperatures, meaning the change compared to the beginning of last century is even more dramatic.

The warming was most dramatic over the Arctic, Central Asia, and central North America, with a huge area being over 10°C above the baseline. As always, a few regions had cooler temperatures, most notably the area around Kamchatka.

There's still a lot of the year left, and it's not clear how much longer the El Niño will be around to heat things up. But so far at least, 2016 temperatures are off at an unprecedented pace.