On March 19, 2024, an excavator drove through a dry pond in Ben Tre Province, southern Vietnam.
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Last month was the hottest March on record, scientists confirmed on Tuesday, as global temperatures persist and renewed calls for urgent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet.
EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) explain March is the 10th month in a row with temperatures warmer than ever before for that time of year. The record-breaking streak dates back to June last year.
The EU’s climate monitoring agency said March temperatures were 1.68 degrees Celsius (3.02 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the average March temperature in the pre-industrial reference period from 1850 to 1900. March temperatures were 0.1 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record set in March 2016.
“March 2024 will mark the tenth month in a row that climate records for air and sea surface temperatures will be broken,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess said in a statement.
“Global average temperatures are at their highest on record, with the past 12 months reaching 1.58°C above pre-industrial levels. Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.
The climate crisis is more likely to lead to extreme heat, with the main drivers being burning of fossil fuels.
Chloe Brimicombe, a climate researcher at the University of Graz in Austria, told CNBC that global temperatures have been breaking records for another month due to human-caused climate change.
“Extreme heatwaves, storms and floods are again happening in the Southern Hemisphere this year. Our global cocoa prices have been affected. We’re also seeing below-average snowfall in central Europe (and) we’re expecting more than half of that.” Europe’s high mountains The glaciers will disappear by the end of the century,” Brimicomb said in an email.
“It’s probably going to be a very long, hot summer, and it’s not going to be good.”
‘More and more worried’
Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Center at the University of Bristol, UK, pointed out that the temperature records broken so far this year are as follows: The hottest year on record.
“One year may be an extreme outlier, but the data we see in 2024 is quite troubling,” Bamber told CNBC via email.
“They suggest feedbacks in the climate system are stronger than models predict, making me and many of my colleagues increasingly concerned about the pace and speed of climate breakdown.”
On April 6, 2024, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a rickshaw driver poured water on his face for relief when the heat wave hit.
Noor Photos | Noor Photos | Getty Images
Shortly before C3S released its latest monthly climate bulletin, the United Nations meteorological agency said that a series of climate records last year gave new meaning to the word “record-breaking” and issued a “red alert” to the world.
In its annual State of the Global Climate report, researchers from the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2023 is the hottest year on record and said that the period 2014 to 2023 also reflects the hottest 10-year period on record.
WMO researchers said global average temperatures in 2023 will be 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, just below the key warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
1.5 degrees Celsius is widely considered an indicator of when climate impacts will become increasingly harmful to people and the planet, as outlined in the landmark Paris Agreement.
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