The new benchmark affirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service caps a year in which countries rich and poor were hammered by disasters that scientists have linked to humanity's role in Earth's rapid warming.

Although exceptional, the warm January temperatures are a stark reminder that, despite all the rhetoric about pivoting to green sources of energy like solar and wind, climate change is taking a turn for the worse because global GHG emissions are not showing any signs of a downward trend.

Last year wasn't just the Earth's hottest year on record — it left a century of high temperature marks in the dust.