According to the European Union’s climate change monitoring organization, the world just had its warmest March on record. This ends a 10-month string in which every month set a new temperature record.
According to a monthly bulletin from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), every one of the past ten months has been the hottest on record globally when compared to the equivalent month in prior years.
According to C3S, the year that ended in March was also the hottest year on record for the planet. The average worldwide temperature between April 2023 and March 2024 was 1.58 degrees Celsius higher than that of the pre-industrial era between 1850 and 1900.
“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 stated.
The scientists cross-checked the 1940-era C3S dataset with additional data to verify that March of this year was the hottest since the pre-industrial era.
By far the hottest year on Earth since global records date back to 1850 was 2023.
This year’s severe weather and unusually high temperatures have caused devastation.
From January to March, a record number of flames broke out in Venezuela due to dryness exacerbated by climate change in the Amazon rainforest. Meanwhile, millions of people in Southern Africa went hungry because of crop destruction resulting from the same drought.
Additionally, marine scientists issued a warning last month. They stated that the Southern Hemisphere is probably experiencing the greatest coral bleaching event in recorded Earth history due to rising waters.
According to C3S, greenhouse gas emissions induced by human activity were the main cause of the unusual heat. El Nino, a meteorological trend that heats the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is one of the other reasons driving increasing temperatures.
El Nino reached its maximum in December and January and is already waning, which could contribute to a break in the hot trend by year’s end.
However, despite El Nino lessening in March, marine air temperatures remained abnormally high. According to C3S, the average global sea surface temperature reached a record high for any month on record.
“The main driver of the warming is fossil fuel emissions,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.
Otto states that if these emissions are not reduced, the earth will continue to warm. This will cause more violent heatwaves, fires, droughts, and heavy rainfall.
Click here for more World news.