Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has revealed that April continued the global temperature streak as the hottest on record.
C3S routinely publishes monthly climate bulletins reporting on the changes observed in global surface air and sea temperatures, sea ice cover and hydrological variables, with its latest update marking 11 months of record-breaking temperatures.
April saw an average surface air temperature of 15.03°C, 0.14°C higher than the previous record set in April 2016.
In Europe, specifically, the average temperature was 1.49°C above the 1991-2020 average for April, the second warmest April on record for the continent.
Outside of Europe, temperatures were most above average over northern and northeastern North America, Greenland, eastern Asia, northwest Middle East, parts of South America, and across most of Africa.
C3S also found that the global sea surface temperature (SST) averaged for April over 60°S–60°N was 21.04°C, which it said is the highest on record for the month, and just marginally below the 21.07°C recorded for March 2024.
This is the thirteenth month in a row that global sea surface temperature has been the warmest on record for the respective month of the year.
The report notes that El Niño – a climate pattern that warms sea surface – continued to weaken towards neutral conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific. However, marine air temperatures, in general, remained at an “unusually high” level.
Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said: “El Niño peaked at the beginning of the year and the sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical pacific are now going back towards neutral conditions.
“However, whilst temperature variations associated with natural cycles like El Niño come and go, the extra energy trapped into the ocean and the atmosphere by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will keep pushing the global temperature towards new records.”