record after record

It has broken its own “warmest” record every month since June 2023. March 2024 was no exception.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported that March worldwide was 1.68 degrees Celsius warmer than the average March between 1850 and 1900, the pre-industrial period.

March The record was broken by only 0.1 degreesBut the overall trend is still worrying, C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said. In March, temperatures were above average across large parts of the planet, from Africa to Greenland, from South America to Antarctica.

Not only did it break its own heat record for the tenth month in a row, but hottest 12-month period in history — 1.58 degrees above pre-industrial average values.

This does not mean that the 1.5 degree warming limit agreed by world leaders in Paris in 2015 has been violated. It is measured in decades, not individual years. We must also remember that we are in a special period in the life of the planet, when the warm currents of El Niño temporarily bring additional heat to the atmosphere. But Burgess adds that “the reality is that we are extremely close to that in the near future.”

Seas and oceans are also warming

The story at sea was no less “shocking,” according to Burgess, where the new world ocean surface temperature record set in February was broken again in March. “This is incredibly unusual”said.

Oceans cover 70 percent of the planet and keep the Earth’s surface habitable by absorbing 90 percent of the excess heat produced by carbon pollution from human activities since the beginning of the industrial age. As oceans warm, they lose their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

More heat, more rain

Warmer oceans also mean more moisture in the atmosphere. Scientists say that for every 1 degree increase in temperature, the air can hold approximately seven percent more water vapor. This leads to increasingly unstable weather conditions, such as strong winds and heavy downpours. For example, parts of Australia, Brazil, and France experienced an unusually wet March.

We know that the hotter our global atmosphere gets, the more extreme events we will experience, the worse it will be, the more severe it will be.
says Samantha Burgess.

The heat is approaching

Observations show that the cyclical El Niño climate pattern, which warms the ocean surface and causes global warming, began to weaken in March. However, scientists say that this phenomenon alone cannot explain the sharp jumps observed last year.

Forecasts for the coming months still point to above-average temperatures. Therefore, scientists expect more records and higher temperatures this summer.