Global Temperatures in March at Near Historic Highs, Says Climate Monitor

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe's climate monitor said on April 8, prolonging an extraordinary heat streak that has tested scientific expectations.

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PARIS –

Europe experienced the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent that is warming faster than any other.

The world, meanwhile, saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell of record or near-record-breaking temperatures that has persisted since July 2023.

Since then, virtually every month has been at least 1.5 deg C hotter than it was before the industrial revolution when humanity began burning massive amounts of coal, oil and gas.

March was 1.6 deg C above pre-industrial times, prolonging an anomaly so extreme scientists are still trying to fully explain it.

"That we're still at 1.6 deg C above pre-industrial is indeed remarkable," said Dr Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.

"We're very firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change," she said.