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FILE – Volunteers hand out drinking water next to a bus stop on a hot summer day in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, March 21, 2024. In just one month, another global heat record will be set. The European Union’s climate change agency Copernicus said March was the warmest March on record on Earth, marking the 10th consecutive month such a record had been set. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A., File)
Mahesh Kumar A./AP
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Mahesh Kumar A./AP
FILE – Volunteers hand out drinking water next to a bus stop on a hot summer day in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, March 21, 2024. In just one month, another global heat record will be set. The European Union’s climate change agency Copernicus said March was the warmest March on record on Earth, marking the 10th consecutive month such a record had been set. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A., File)
Mahesh Kumar A./AP
WASHINGTON – The Earth in March broke monthly records for global heat for the 10th consecutive month, with both temperatures and global oceans reaching their highest values for the month, the European Union’s climate change agency Copernicus said. did.
The average temperature in March 2024 was 14.14 degrees Celsius (57.9 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding the previous record set in 2016 by a tenth of a degree, according to Copernicus data. And it was 1.68 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the temperature benchmark in the late 1800s, before fossil fuel burning began to rapidly increase.
Since June last year, Earth has been setting new heat records every month, with marine heatwaves across large swathes of Earth’s oceans contributing to the heatwave.
Scientists say this period’s record heat was not entirely surprising due to a strong El Niño phenomenon that warms the central Pacific Ocean and changes global weather patterns.
“But combined with unnatural ocean heatwaves, these records are breathtaking,” said Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
As El Niño weakens, the range in which global average temperatures exceed each month should shrink, Francis said.
Climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-induced climate change, caused by carbon dioxide and methane emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas.
“This trajectory will not change until greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere stop rising, which means we must stop burning fossil fuels, stop deforestation and produce food more sustainably as soon as possible,” Francis said. It means we have to cultivate it.”
Until then, expect more records to be broken, she said.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world set a goal to limit temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Copernicus temperature data is monthly and uses a slightly different measurement system than the Paris reference values, which are averaged over 20 or 30 years.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said March’s record temperatures were not as exceptional as other months of the past year, which have seen significant record-breaking.
“The record-breaking months were even more unusual,” Burgess said, citing February 2024 and September 2023 as examples, but added: “The trajectory is not in the right direction.”
The Earth has now experienced 12 months of average monthly temperatures 1.58 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the Paris norm, according to Copernicus data.
Global sea surface temperatures averaged 21.07 degrees Celsius (69.93 degrees Fahrenheit) in March, the highest on record for the month and slightly warmer than February’s record.
“We need more ambitious global action to help us reach net zero as quickly as possible,” Mr Burgess said.
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