This year's March was the warmest in Europe in recorded history - research

According to the EU Copernicus climate service, Europe experienced the warmest March on record this year since 1940. This is reported by UNN with reference to the Copernicus study.

Details

"March 2025 was the warmest March for Europe, further emphasizing that temperatures continue to break records. It was also a month of contrasting rainfall extremes across Europe, with many regions experiencing their driest March on record," said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Last month, the average temperature in Europe was 6.03 degrees Celsius. This is 2.41 degrees above the average from 1991 to 2020. Temperatures were above average across Europe, but especially in Eastern Europe it was warmer than usual.

Globally, last month, with a temperature of 14.06 degrees Celsius, was the second warmest March on Earth. The previous heat record was set in 2024, when the average global temperature was 14.14 degrees Celsius. Then the heat record was broken for the tenth month in a row.

Sea ice in the Arctic has also decreased in size. In March, sea ice reaches its maximum extent for the year. Every year in mid-September, sea ice reaches its lowest point.

"Arctic sea ice reached its lowest monthly level for March in 47 years of satellite observations - 6% below average. This is the fourth month in a row that sea ice area is record low for this time of year," Copernicus said.

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It's getting colder and colder

Over the past two centuries, humanity has been emitting more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, leading to an increase in the average global temperature: on average by more than 1.3 degrees Celsius per century. This leads to the fact that periods of (extreme) cold around the world are becoming less frequent. Such weather phenomena still occur, but due to climate change they are becoming less frequent. In addition, warm periods have become warmer and dry periods have become drier.

Earlier, NASA and the American Snow and Ice Data Center NSIDC estimated that there has never been so little sea ice in the Arctic as there is now.

As a result of the drought, many forest fires were recorded in March. After a wet period with relatively high temperatures, plants were able to develop well. This also means that fire can spread quickly through further drought.

The impact of the March warming on different regions

According to Copernicus, most of southern Europe experienced wetter-than-average conditions in March 2025. In particular, the Iberian Peninsula, which was hit by a series of storms and suffered massive flooding.

Conversely, the UK and Ireland, in a large strip from west to east across Central Europe stretching south to the Black Sea, Greece and Turkey, were drier than average.

March 2025 was drier than average across most of North America, southwestern, central and eastern Asia, southwestern Australia, parts of southern Africa and southeastern South America.

It was wetter than average in eastern Canada, the western United States, the Middle East, across Russia and in parts of Central Asia, southeastern Africa, and northeastern Australia.

Addition

The World Meteorological Organization in a special report on the state of the global climate confirmed that 2024 was likely the first calendar year to have a temperature more than 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial era, with a global average surface temperature of 1.55 ± 0.13 °C above the average temperature of 1850-1900. In other words, it is the warmest year in 175 years of observations.