Warmest March raises climate concern

The world is "very firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change", an environmental scientist has said, after data from Europe's climate monitor revealed that the continent had recorded its warmest March, extending a sustained period of record temperatures.

Friederike Otto, from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, said it was "remarkable" that figures showed that March was 1.6 degrees warmer than before the Industrial Revolution, keeping up a near-unbroken run of record-breaking readings dating back to July 2023.

This March was the warmest on record by a significant margin, 0.26 degrees above the previous monthly record set in 2014, which in addition to causing heat-related issues has led to erratic rainfall patterns.