The European Union said the planet had its warmest March on record, ending a 10-month streak of setting new temperature records every month. Reuters reports: The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Agency (C3S) announced in its monthly report that the past 10 months have all ranked as the world's hottest months on record, compared to the same month last year. According to C3S, the 12 months ending in March ranked as the hottest 12 months on record on Earth. The average global temperature from April 2023 to March 2024 was 1.58 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average from 1850 to 1900.
The C3S dataset dates back to 1940, and scientists matched it with other data to confirm that last month was the hottest March since pre-industrial times. Already, 2023 was the hottest year on Earth in world records since 1850. The El Niño phenomenon peaked in December and January and is now weakening, which may help break the heatwave streak towards the end of the year. However, despite El Niño easing in March, global average sea surface temperatures were the highest ever for any month on record, and sea temperatures remained unusually high, C3S said. “The main cause of global warming is fossil fuel emissions,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. Failure to reduce these emissions will lead to further global warming, resulting in more severe droughts, fires, heat waves and heavy rains, Otto said.