March sees 10th straight month of record heat

NEW DELHI: The European Union’s climate change monitoring service, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), stated that the world just experienced its warmest March on record and the tenth straight month of historic heat, with sea surface temperatures also hitting a shocking new high.

Each of the last 10 months ranked as the world’s hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, C3S said in a monthly bulletin. The 12 months ending with March also ranked as the planet’s hottest ever recorded 12-month period, C3S said. “From April 2023 to March 2024, the global average temperature was 1.58 degrees Celsius above the average in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period.”

“It’s the long-term trend with exceptional records that has us very concerned,” said by Samantha Burgess, C3S. “Seeing records like this – month in, month out – really shows us that our climate is changing, is changing rapidly,” she added.

C3S’ dataset goes back to 1940, which the scientists cross-checked with other data to confirm that last month was the hottest March since the pre-industrial period. Already, 2023 was the planet’s hottest year in global records going back to 1850. Extreme weather and exceptional temperatures have wreaked havoc this year.