Once again, another month had record warmth. March 2024 was the warmest March on Earth. And it's the 10th month in a row that set global heat records (since June 2023). Yikes!
Ocean warmth has had 11 record-setting months in a row. Meanwhile, scientists are divided over whether climate change (and warmth) is accelerating or all this record warmth month after month is in line with climate change predictions.
The big question: What will summer heat be like?
From The Weather Channel: Earth's Warmest March Is 10th Straight Record Month, Just-Released Data Shows
March was Earth's warmest on record, according to preliminary data, the latest month in a stretch of heat records since the planet's hottest year in 2023.
Another month, another record: According to the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, March's globally averaged temperature was about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average, about 0.2 degrees warmer than 2016, the previous March record in their dataset dating to 1940.
Those figures may not sound impressive, but they're significant in the realm of globally averaged temperature data synthesized from measurements taken by weather stations, ships, aircraft and satellites.
Ten in a row: March was the 10th straight month Earth set a new warm record for that month, a streak that started in June 2023.
That includes its two hottest months – July and August – as well as the planet's four most anomalously warm months – September, October, November and December – according to the ECMWF's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). All of those led to a record-shattering warm year in 2023.
Most off-the-charts warmth was in Africa and Europe. As you can see in the map at the top of this article, March warmth was most persistent in southern and western Africa, swaths of Europe, eastern Canada and Greenland.