GENEVA: January and February 2016 smashed temperature records, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday as it warned climate change was advancing at an “unprecedented” rate.

Temperatures in the first two months of 2016 followed a year that broke “all previous records by a wide margin,” the UN’s weather agency said.

The WMO pointed to record 2015 sea surface temperatures, unabated sea-level rise, shrinking sea ice and extreme weather events around the world.

“The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a result of greenhouse gas emissions is unprecedented in modern records,” the WMO’s new chief, Petteri Taalas, said.

Dave Carlson, head of the WMO-co-sponsored World Climate Research Programme, said the rising temperatures this year were especially alarming.

“The startlingly high temperatures so far in 2016 have sent shockwaves around the climate science community,” Carlson said in the statement.

WMO confirmed findings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last Thursday. The US agency determined that last month was the warmest February since modern records began, with an average temperature that was 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.18 degrees Fahrenheit) bove the 20th-century average.

The hike in temperatures during the first two months of the year was especially felt in the far north, with the extent of sea ice in the Arctic at a satellite-record low in February, the agency said.