Copernicus service confirms March records

Specialists confirm what people can see for themselves: we are having a very warm spring. March 2024 became the 10th month in a row in which record global temperatures were recorded, European Union scientists announced. March 2024 was also warmer globally than any other March since records began, according to data provided by the European Union's Copernicus climate change monitoring service. The data used by Copernicus start from 1950, with some earlier data also available. "March 2024 continues the sequence of breaking climate records for both air temperature and ocean surface temperature, being the tenth consecutive month of broken records," said Deputy Director of the Copernicus Service, Samantha Burgess. The air temperature on the Earth's surface averaged 14.14 degrees Celsius in March, the operators of the Copernicus service announced. This value is 0.73 degrees Celsius higher than the average for the reference period 1991-2020 and 0.10 degrees Celsius higher than the warmest March on record, in 2016. Compared to the period 1850-1900, the pre-industrial reference period, March 2024 was 1.68 degrees Celsius warmer, the report states. The average global temperature for the last 12 months (April 2023 - March 2024) is the highest since records began and was 1.58 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, said Samantha Burgess. However, this does not yet mean that the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set by the Paris Agreement has already been reached, as longer-term averages are used in such analyses. The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Monitoring Service regularly publishes data on Earth's surface temperature, sea ice cover and precipitation on Earth. Its findings are based on computer-generated analyzes incorporating billions of measurements taken by satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.