It turns out the Earth’s global temperatures in March were the most abnormally warm on record for any month.
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Despite the cooling rains of El Niño, Riverside in March was about 5 degrees warmer than average since record keeping began in 1893, according to the National Weather Service.
It turns out last March was the hottest in 137 years of record keeping, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says.
That makes it the highest monthly temperature departure among all 1,635 months on record, said a NOAA statement.
The succession of temperature records has also been accompanied by other notable climate records, including thebiggest ever year-to-year jump in carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, as well as a record low winter Arctic sea ice peak.
NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden, the 11 heat records in a row smashes a streak of 10 set in 1944.
As representatives of the world’s nations prepare to gather later this week to sign a landmark agreement to limit the human-caused warming of the planet, global temperature records continue to pile up.
El Niño conditions weakened considerably in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean during March.
The planet’s temperature for January through March was 1.15°C (2.07°F) above the 20th century average for the same period, according to NOAA.
Time series of the January-March (first quarter) 2016 global average temperature 1880-2016.
This surpassed the previous record set in 2015 by 0.32°C / (0.58°F), and marks the highest monthly temperature departure on record.
With record-breaking temperatures, 2016 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. How much warmer is the Earth? It found record warmth in eastern Brazil, most of eastern and central Africa, much of southeastern Asia, and large portions of northern and eastern Australia.
Most of northwestern Canada and Alaska, along with vast regions of northern and western Asia, observed temperatures at least 3°C (5°F) above their 1981-2010 average.
For NOAA, this is the 37th time monthly heat records have been broken since the year 2000, but it has been more than 99 years since the last time a global cold record has been set.
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It surprises no one at this point, but the announcement has to be made anyway: March 2016 broke yet another heat record, being crowned the new “hottest month” on record. Typically, El Niño episodes last for about a year and occur several years apart.
