The warmest March ever recorded. Temperature records in the last ten months
The European climate monitoring service announced on April 9th that the planet has experienced the hottest March in history, thus marking the peak of a series of ten consecutive months where each month set a new temperature record.
Each of the last ten months has been classified as the warmest month in history, compared to the corresponding month in previous years, said the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) in a monthly bulletin, as reported by Reuters.
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The twelve months ending in March have also been classified as the hottest 12-month period ever recorded on the planet, according to C3S. From April 2023 to March 2024, the global average temperature was 1.58 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period average of 1850-1900.
"The long-term trend with exceptional records concerns us greatly", said Samantha Burgess, deputy director at C3S, to Reuters.
"Seeing these records - month by month - really shows us that our climate is changing, and changing rapidly", she added.
The C3S dataset dates back to 1940, and scientists cross-verified it with other data to confirm that last month was the warmest March since the pre-industrial period.
2023 was the hottest year on record globally dating back to 1850.
Extreme weather and exceptional temperatures have wreaked havoc this year.
Climate change-induced drought in the Amazon Rainforest region, triggered a record number of forest fires in Venezuela from January to March, while drought in South Africa destroyed crops and left millions facing famine.
Marine scientists warned last month that a massive coral bleaching event is likely to occur in the southern hemisphere, driven by warming waters, and could be the worst in the planet's history.
The primary cause of the exceptional warmth has been human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, said C3S. Other factors contributing to temperature rise include El Niño, the weather pattern that warms surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
