March was the tenth hottest consecutive month on record, according to Copernicus

Record for a month of March, but also a tenth monthly record in a row. According to Copernicus, the European Earth monitoring program, “March 2024 was warmer overall than any previous March on record”with a global average temperature of 14.14°C, “i.e. 0.73°C above the 1991-2020 average”. The previous record was in March 2016. This is also 1.68°C warmer than an estimate of the March average for 1850-1900, the pre-industrial reference period.

It is also the tenth warmest consecutive month on record. The global average temperature over the last twelve months, between April 2023 and March 2024, “is the highest ever recorded, with 0.70°C higher than the 1991-2020 average and 1.58°C higher than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average”announces Copernicus.

From a hydrological point of view, the weather has been “wetter than average across most of Western Europe” in March 2024. But the rest of Europe was mostly drier than average, with precipitation significantly below average. Drier than average conditions also set in “in parts of the central United States, western Canada and northern Mexico, parts of Central Asia and China, southeastern Australia, most of ‘Southern Africa and South America’.