March is the tenth consecutive month to break heat records – 04/08/2024 – Environment

The European climate observatory warns that last month was the hottest March ever recorded in the world and the tenth consecutive month to break heat records, with maximum temperatures also recorded in the oceans.

According to the Copernicus observatory, funded by the European Union, monthly heat records have been occurring since June 2023 — and March was no exception.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (called C3S) points out that the average temperature in March 2024 was 1.68°C above a typical March in the pre-industrial period (1850-1900).

What’s most alarming, however, is the bigger picture, says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

Large swaths of the planet experienced above-average temperatures in March, from Africa to Greenland, South America and Antarctica.

Not only was it the tenth consecutive month to break its own heat record, but it also marks the conclusion of the hottest 12-month period in history: 1.58°C above pre-industrial averages.

This does not mean, however, that the 1.5°C warming limit, established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, has been exceeded. This average needs to be evaluated in decades, not years.

However, “we are extraordinarily close, and already in extra time”, says Burgess.

The IPCC, the UN scientific panel on climate change, warns that the world is likely to exceed 1.5°C in the early 2030s.

Records on the surface of the oceans

After the record ocean surface temperature in February, a new maximum of 21.07°C was reached in March, except in areas close to the poles.

“It’s incredibly unusual,” highlights Burgess.

The oceans cover 70% of the planet and have kept the Earth’s surface habitable by absorbing 90% of the excess heat produced by carbon emissions from human activities since the industrial era.

Warmer oceans threaten marine life and cause more moisture in the atmosphere, which leads to more unstable weather conditions, such as strong winds or torrential rain.

“The more the global atmosphere warms, the more numerous, severe and intense extreme phenomena will be”, says the scientist, citing the threat of “heat waves, droughts, floods and forest fires”.

Recent examples include water shortages in Vietnam, the Spanish region of Catalonia or sub-Saharan Africa.

Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, will ration its water supply from Thursday (11), while in Mexico, shortages loom over the next presidential campaign. Russia, Brazil and France, on the other hand, have recently suffered floods.

According to Copernicus, the El Niño phenomenon, which warms the sea surface in the Pacific Ocean and causes warmer weather around the world, continued to weaken in March.

But its warming effect does not alone explain the drastic spikes recorded last year, Burgess points out. Furthermore, forecasts for the coming months continue to indicate above-average temperatures, she adds.

Will more records be broken in the coming months? “If we continue to see so much heat on the surface of the ocean (…) it is very likely”, assesses Burgess.

“2023 is within the range predicted by climate models, but really at the outer limit”, far from the average, the scientist also says.