Global temperature records broken for 11 months in a row

The average global surface air temperature last month was warmer than any previous April on record, according to the latest monthly report from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

This makes last month the 11th month in a row during which the global monthly temperature record was broken.

The average surface air temperature around the world during April was 15.03°C.

At just over 15 degrees Celsius it was two-thirds of a degree warmer than the average for the 30-year period up to 2020 and 1.58 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial reference temperature for the month of April.

The global-average temperature for the past 12 months is now the highest on record at 1.61 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.

While a long streak of monthly global temperature records is unusual, it is not unprecedented. It last happened eight years ago.

The Director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Carlo Buontempo, said while 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.

For Europe the data shows last month was not the warmest April on record however, but instead was the second warmest for the continent, at 1.49°C above the 1991–2020 average.

Temperatures were most above average in eastern European regions.

Fennoscandia and Iceland experienced below-average temperatures.

The mean temperature, however, masks the contrast between warmer and colder temperatures experienced at the start and latter part of April in western Europe.

The report says the naturally occurring El Niño warming event in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean continued to weaken towards neutral conditions, but marine air temperatures in general remained at an unusually high level. 

The average global sea surface temperature was the highest on record for a month of April and it was the thirteenth month in a row that sea surface temperature records have been broken.