The global average surface temperature last month broke records by a “stunning” margin, prompting some scientists to declare a “climate emergency”.

NASA data shows the average temperature was 1.35 degrees warmer than the February average of 1951-80.

The previous record difference was set in January, at 1.15 degrees warmer than the long-term average for the month.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has also acknowledged February was the warmest relative to its average of any month on record.

Such records are typically broken by only a few-hundredths of a degree.

The five warmest months since 1880 – as measured by departure from average in both the NOAA and NASA databases – were the past five months.

February also marked the 10th consecutive monthly temperature record.

On academic website The Conversation, Australian scientists Steve Sherwood and Stefan Rahmstorf describe the February result as a “disturbing and unprecedented spike.”

“This is the largest warm anomaly of any month since records began in 1880,” they wrote.

“It far exceeds the records set in 2014 and again in 2015 (the first year when the one-degree mark was breached).”

They say the combination of global warming and the now-weakening El Nino is to blame.

Jeff Masters and Bob Henson from global weather website Weather Underground have called the figures “jaw-dropping” and “a bombshell of a climate report”.

They say it is another reminder of the “incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases.

“In short, we are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of two-degree warming over pre-industrial levels.”