The final 31 days of 2021 marked the warmest December in 68 years, the National Meteorological Service (SMN) said. 

The average temperature during the month was 18.7 C, surpassing December 2016 to become the hottest final month of the year since record keeping began in 1953.

The historic December average for Mexico, which takes 1981-2010 data from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as a reference, is 16.9. December was 1.8 degrees above that average.  

The average nationwide temperature for 2021 was 22.2, making it the fourth warmest year since 1953, only eclipsed by the hotter years of 2017, 2019 and 2020.

However, the head of the SMN, Miguel Ángel Gallegos, warned against over generalizations on the national scale, explaining that extreme heat in some states had raised the nationwide average. “The increase in temperature does not occur in a generalized way throughout the country. On the Pacific coast, from Sinaloa to Chiapas there have been temperatures in the past year of 40 and 41. For the months of March, April and May, in the northern part of the country, we had temperatures of almost 50,” he said.

Meanwhile, the SMN also noted that rainfall was below average in recent months. The agency said that from October 1 through January 9 there was 8% less rain than the historic average for the same period. 

And it has been an extremely dry 2021 so far: for the first nine days of the year, the country saw 39.4% less precipitation than the historic average for the same period. 

The agency added that only 21 of the 56 cold fronts forecast for the winter season have come to fruition, making it milder than usual.

With reports from Milenio