March marks another record in global heat

The world just experienced its warmest March on record, capping a 10-month streak in which every month set a new temperature record, the European Union's climate change monitoring service said on Tuesday.

Each of the last ten months ranked as the world's hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (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," C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess told Reuters.

"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.

Reuters