As we began the month, heavy snow across much of Central Europe continued from December. Weather-related deaths continued to rise and the winter storms caused major travel issues, power outages and cut off several Alpine villages.

A bit further south, storm after storm continued to slam the eastern Mediterranean. Coastal homes were destroyed in Lebanon, while further inland the heavy rain flooded refugee camps housing about one million Syrian refugees.

In the southern hemisphere, Australia spent most of the month enduring an ongoing heat wave. Several cities broke daily temperature records. The heat and the dry conditions across Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales also meant that the bushfire threat continued to increase.

As the month ended, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said that January was the hottest month on record.

In North America, the infamous polar vortex brought extreme cold to south-central Canada and to the US northern plains, Midwest and Northeast, where temperatures lower than -35 degrees Celsius paralysed much of the region for days.