The global temperature rose 1.5 degrees Celsius in March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports. This marks another heat record in the world’s climate history, making it the 11th month in a row that the globe was “warm.”
Scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information have said that in the first quarter of 2016 (January-March), the average temperature for the globe was monitored to be 2.07 degrees Fahrenheit above this century’s average. This makes it the highest ever recorded temperature from 1880-2016, beating the 2015 tally of 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit. The global average for sea surface temperature has also reached a peak, surpassing the 1998 record by 0.42 degrees Fahrenheit.
In March, the average global temperature went even higher at 2.20 degrees Fahrenheit above average, now the hottest ever recorded. In its 11th month, March also broke the climate record for longest temperature streak in NOAA’s 137 years of measuring climate temperatures.
Independent organization Climate Central, on the other hand, has found the average global temperature for 2016’s first quarter to be 1.48 degrees Celsius, as computed by NOAA and NASA. NASA uses the time period 1951-1980 as the basis for its data, while NOAA computes according to the 20th century average.
The Paris Climate Conference in December 2015 aimed to keep global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius – a goal that the current climate conditions seem set on breaking. Climate Central is of the opinion that this “hot start for 2016 is a notable symbolic milestone.”
However, this year still has 9 months to go, and if the Paris Climate goal is to be attained, prompt action is necessary. It remains up to the world’s respective governments, and each individual on a smaller scale, to recognize these alarming changes and subsequently act to address them immediately and effectively, before the world gets even hotter and things get worse as an effect.
