According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), March 2010 witnessed the warmest globally averaged temperatures for any March in the past 131 years: 0.84°C above normal.
Globally, temperatures from January-March were 0.75°C above normal, ranking 2nd in the GISS record and beating out the same time periods from 2005 and 1998, the two warmest years in the GISS record.
This comes on the heels of the 6th warmest February, according to NOAA, which calculates global temperatures slightly differently than does NASA. NOAA should release their own monthly report in the next couple of days.
The location of places that were warmer and cooler than normal continued from the past few months: below average in the southeast U.S., Europe and most of Russia. Mexico was also cooler than normal. Meanwhile, Canada and the Arctic experienced much warmer temperatures than normal. The Middle East, northern Africa, South America and Antarctica were also notably warm.
Given our continued climate forcing with greenhouse gas pollution, the 2010s are likely to set a new record for the warmest decade. This was true for the 2000s, the 1990s and the 1980s. 2010 is already starting out with some of the warmest temperatures globally on record. Shifting some of those warmer than normal temperatures over the U.S. might help to convince the public that the developing climate crisis deserves their attention.
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