For the tenth month in a row… March records record temperatures that sound the alarm and baffle scientists

BRUSSELS – Scientists confirmed that March was the tenth consecutive hottest month on record for this time of year, as global climate records continue to collapse.

Data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Commission (C3S) show that March 2024 was hotter globally than any other record for this month, which has left climate scientists scratching their heads, hoping that this is a result of the El Niño phenomenon and not an accident. A symptom of the planet’s worse-than-expected health.

Global surface temperatures in March were 0.1 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record for the month, set in 2016, and 1.68 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average, according to data released Tuesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Panel.

This is the tenth consecutive monthly record in the warming phase, which broke all previous records.

Over the past 12 months, average global temperatures have been 1.58 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This exceeds, at least temporarily, the 1.5°C standard set as a target in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Sea surface temperatures outside the polar regions reached record highs in March, averaging 21.07 degrees Celsius during the month, which is slightly higher than the 21.06 degrees Celsius recorded in February.

The UK Met Office has previously predicted the 1.5°C target will be exceeded over the course of a year, and other leading climate monitoring organizations have said current temperature levels are still within the limits predicted by computer models.

However, the sharp rise in temperatures over the past year surprised many scientists, and raised concerns regarding the possibility of accelerating heat.

Diana Orge-Vorsatz, one of the vice-chairs of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), noted that the planet’s temperature has risen at a rate of 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade over the past 15 years, nearly double the rate of 0.18 degrees Celsius every year. Decade since the 1970s.

She commented: “Is this within the scope of climate fluctuations or a sign of accelerated warming? “My concern is that it may be too late if we wait and see.”

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, added that temperature records are being broken every month by up to 0.2 degrees Celsius.

Schmidt listed several plausible reasons for this anomaly, including the influence of El Niño, a decrease in the cooling of sulfur dioxide particles due to pollution controls, the fallout from the January 2022 Honga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcanic eruption in Tonga, and intensification of solar activity in the period leading up to reaching Maximum expected solar energy.

He continued: “If the anomaly does not stabilize by August, which is a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events, the world will be in uncharted territory.” “This might mean that global warming is already fundamentally changing how the climate system works, much sooner than scientists expected.”

Source: The Guardian