March 2023 Was World's Second Hottest on Record: Climate Report ... - The Weather Channel

March 2023 Was World’s Second Hottest on Record: Climate Report | Weather.com

Placing second always comes with its own set of bittersweet feelings. But when it comes to global warming and the ever-increasing amount of emissions we're dumping into the atmosphere, we can only hope not to break warming records from the previous year.

Tragically enough, we did come second in two different aspects this time; according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service's (C3S) latest monthly insights on March 2023, things are heating up like never before — literally.

Second warmest March on record

For starters, last month was jointly the second warmest March we've ever seen globally, which is already terrible news for climate change. According to the bulletin, most of Asia, large swathes of North Africa and southwestern Russia sizzled at temperatures much warmer than average, even setting many records in the process.

However, this is only part of the full extent of the dire situation. Northeastern North America, Argentina and its neighbouring countries, massive parts of Australia and coastal Antarctica endured even more of a spike in average temperatures through this month, the C3S report outlines.

As for the rest, most of northern Europe and western and central North America experienced below-average temperatures during March.

Ice cover at second lowest point

Soaring temperatures in areas with gargantuan ice sheets (such as Antarctica) are obviously undesirable, and its outcome was blatantly visible in the dwindling sea ice during the month.

The report outlined that Antarctic sea ice extent was at its second lowest point ever, drooping to 28% below March's average. In fact, we've observed something of the sort for the second month in a row, with ice levels dropping to concerning levels in February as well.

Meanwhile, the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which is known to be much more sensitive to climate changes than Antarctica, floated at 4% below average. This is the fourth lowest ever recorded, and is painfully close to three of the lowest extents.

While sea ice concentrations were much below average in all sectors of the Southern Ocean, it remained surprisingly well above average in the Greenland Sea during this time.

Climate change triggering rapid melting of the available sheets can be devastating, since they are one of the main proponents of sea-level rise, and are exceedingly instrumental in reflecting sunlight back and significantly keeping the oceans from further warming.

Wet and dry extremes around the world

Global rainfall during March, while not breaking any distinct records, remained highly contrasting as well.

Several parts of Asia, the USA, Africa, New Zealand, northern Australia, South Africa and Brazil experienced extremely wetter-than-usual conditions during the month. This was eventually reflected in the form of severe deluges in many parts.

Meanwhile, above-average arid conditions were seen in regions extremely conducive to wildfires, such as the Iberian Peninsula where Spain and Portugal reside, as well as Central Europe, the eastern Balkan countries and the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea.

Many parts of Argentina, south Australia, southwestern Africa and other parts of Asia continued to reel under droughts exacerbated by soaring temperature spikes in the region.

These temperature anomalies can have devastating consequences for the planet and significantly worsen droughts, spike ocean temperatures and destroy fragile ecosystems. As such, these pathetic numbers should serve as a stark wake-up call to the world's leaders to reinforce rapid climate action.

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