A new temperature record – for the tenth month in a row

The bleak climate trend continues. March was the warmest on record, and we have now passed the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming in one year according to the European Union's climate service Copernicus.

“Seeing these kind of records month after month shows us that our climate is changing, and changing rapidly,” the European Union Meteorological Service wrote.

Globally, the average temperature in March was 1.68 degrees warmer than in pre-industrial times, and sea surface temperatures were also higher than normal.

But Copernicus points out that the current numbers do not mean that the limit set by the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees has been reached. The agreement focuses on long-term development and not on individual years of data.

“But the truth is that we are so close, we are already living on borrowed time,” says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, in a commentary.

The UN climate panel (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) warns that we risk exceeding the limit permanently before the start of 2030. Although emissions must be halved in the 2020s to avoid this, they continue to increase half a decade before Time.

Researchers stress that we can still impact development by significantly reducing emissions. This is crucial if we are to ensure a sustainable future for both humanity and the planet.

Temperatures will continue to rise until we reach climate neutrality, concludes Samantha Burgess.