March is tenth straight month to be hottest on record

. Europe's climate monitor said Tuesday that March was the hottest on record and the tenth straight month of historic heat, with sea surface temperatures also hitting a "shocking" new high, France24 reports.

Every month since June 2023 has beaten its own "hottest ever" tag -- and March 2024 was no exception. The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service said that March globally was 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter than an average March between the years 1850-1900, the reference period for the pre-industrial era, the report adds.

The March record was only broken by 0.1C but it is the broader trend that was more alarming, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Europe’s climate monitor. It was not only the tenth consecutive month to break its own heat record, but capped the hottest 12-month period on the books -- 1.58C above pre-industrial averages.

This doesn't mean the 1.5C warming limit agreed by world leaders in Paris in 2015 has been breached -- that is measured in decades, not individual years.

Nonetheless "the reality is that we're extraordinarily close, and already on borrowed time," Burgess told AFP.

The story at sea was no less "shocking", Burgess said, with a new record for global ocean surface temperature set in February eclipsed once again in March.