April, the eleventh consecutive month of record heat in the world

This is clear from the latest climate bulletin of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which relies on the European Commission. This is what is indicated by the bulletin issued this Wednesday The air temperature on the planet’s surface last April was 15.03 degrees, which is 0.67 degrees above the average for that month between 1991 and 2020, and 0.14 degrees above the previous warmest April in 2016. This string of 11 consecutive months with heat records is unusual and to find another one you have to go back between May 2015 and August 2016, when the planet was under the influence of another powerful El Niño episode.

The historical Copernicus monthly temperature series, which began in 1940 and analyzed by Survimedia, indicates that last April’s global temperature anomaly was the twelfth highest on record, led by September 2023 (0.93 degrees above normal) and followed by October, Happened in November and December. last year (0.85 degrees). C3S director Carlo Buontempo indicated that El Niño peaked at the beginning of the year and sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific are returning to “neutral conditions”.

“Although temperature changes associated with natural cycles such as El Niño will come and go, the excess energy trapped in the ocean and atmosphere by rising greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to push global temperatures toward new records.”

warm sea

Furthermore, andLast month was 1.58 degrees warmer than the average April estimate between 1850 and 1900That is, the reference is the pre-industrial period. The average monthly temperature over the past 12 months (May 2023 to April 2024) was the highest ever recorded, 0.73 degrees above the average between 1991 and 2020, and 1.61 degrees above the pre-industrial period between 1850 and 1900. . That was 1.49 degrees warmer than normal in Europe compared to the average between 1991 and 2020, making April 2024 the second-warmest April on the continent. It was warmer than normal in parts of Eastern Europe, while Iceland and parts of Finland, Norway, Russia and Sweden were cooler than normal. Outside Europe, temperatures were well above average in northern and northeastern North America, Greenland, eastern Asia, the northwestern Middle East, parts of South America, and much of Africa.

The El Niño phenomenon continued to weaken in the eastern equatorial Pacific, but sea air temperatures actually remained at unusually high levels. Global average sea surface temperature between 60ºS and 60ºN latitudes for April 2024

—that is, the entire planet except Greenland, Antarctica, and the northernmost regions of the Americas, Europe, and Asia—turned out to have the highest temperature of the month at 21.04 degrees, just 0.03 shy of any other month’s record ever set. March 2024.

Rain

Regarding rain, Last April was wetter than normal across much of north-west, central and north-east Europe. Instead, below-normal rainfall fell across large areas of eastern Spain, peninsular Italy, the western Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine and southern Russia, as well as almost the entire south of the continent, including Iceland. Beyond Europe, April was wetter than average in areas of central, eastern, and southern North America; Heavy rains often cause floods in Central Asia, the Persian Gulf countries, Far East Asia, Eastern Australia and southern Brazil. In contrast, drier than average conditions were observed over parts of northern Mexico, the Caspian Sea and around the Tibetan Plateau, as well as almost all of Australia.

sea ​​ice

On the other hand, Arctic sea ice extent in April was 2% below average, a relatively small anomaly compared to ice extent recorded during that month in the past decade.

As in March, sea ice concentration anomalies were mixed across the Arctic and remained above average in the Greenland Sea, a trend that has persisted since last October. for its part, Antarctic sea ice extent was 9% less than averageThe range, the tenth lowest for April in satellite data records, continues a series of persistent negative anomalies seen since 2017. In February and March, sea ice concentrations in the northern Weddell Sea and Ross-Amundsen Sea region were well below average. ,