Climate change: ‘Uncharted territory’ fears after record hot March
According to a prominent scientist interviewed by the BBC, failure to see a drop in temperatures by year’s end could push climate change “into unknown territory.”
This cautionary statement follows the revelation that last month marked the tenth consecutive record-breaking month for warmth globally, with March being the warmest on record. Concerns are mounting that this trend may signal a transition into a phase of accelerated climate change.
The recent heatwave is partly attributed to the weather phenomenon known as El Niño. While temperatures are expected to decrease temporarily once El Niño dissipates in the coming months, there are apprehensions among scientists that this might not occur as anticipated.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, expressed concern, stating that if record-breaking temperatures persist into late summer, it would signify uncharted territory for climate patterns.
March 2024 was recorded as 1.68°C warmer than the “pre-industrial” era, according to data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Despite this alarming trend, most researchers believe that longer-term warming trends are still in line with expectations, and there is no consensus yet on whether the climate has transitioned into a new phase.
The unprecedented warmth experienced towards the end of 2023 has left scientists puzzled, as they grapple to provide a precise explanation for the phenomenon.
The March record was expected. El Niño, which began last June and peaked in December, has been adding heat to the warmth put into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of high temperatures.
But temperatures began breaking records by a particularly large margin around last September, and back then, El Niño was still developing, so can’t explain all of the extra warmth.
“Our predictions failed quite dramatically for the specifics of 2023, and if previous statistics don’t work, then it becomes much harder to say what’s going to happen in the future,” he said.
“We’re still trying to understand why the situation changed so dramatically in the middle of last year, and how long this situation will continue, whether it is a phase shift or whether it’s a blip in long-term climate trends,” agrees Dr Samantha Burgess from Copernicus.
The current El Niño is now waning, and will likely end in the next couple of months.
