For the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole, and the world’s oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus.

Climate scientists say most of the record heat is from human-caused climate change of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. Additional heat comes from a natural El Nino, a warming of the central Pacific that changes global weather patterns.

The latest record-breaking in this climate change-fueled global hot streak includes sea surface temperatures that weren’t just the hottest for February, but eclipsed any month on record, soaring past August 2023’s mark and still rising at the end of the month. And February, as well the previous two winter months, soared well past the internationally set threshold for long-term warming, Copernicus reported Wednesday.