Click the link to read the article on The Los Angeles Times website (Hayley Smith). Here’s an excerpt:
April 13, 2024
Earth’s worrisome warming trajectory continued unabated last month, with March marking the 10th month in a row that the planet has broken global heat records, international climate officials announced this week. With an average surface temperature of 57.45 degrees Fahrenheit, last month was warmer globally than any previous March on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The month was about 0.18 of a degree warmer than the previous hottest March, in 2016, the service said.
“March 2024 continues the sequence of climate records toppling for both air temperature and ocean surface temperatures, with the 10th consecutive record-breaking month,” read a statement from Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ deputy director. “The global average temperature is the highest on record, with the past 12 months being 1.58 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Indeed, March was well above the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) international target for limiting the worst effects of climate change. The global average temperature measured about 3 degrees, or 1.68 degrees Celsius, warmer than the designated 1850 to 1900 preindustrial reference period. What’s more, the global average temperature for the last 12 months — April 2023 through March 2024 — is the highest on record, at 2.8 degrees, or 1.58 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial average.