March 2018: Earth's 5th Warmest March on Record

March 2018 was the planet's fifth warmest March since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Wednesday. NASA rated March 2018 as the sixth warmest March on record, with the only warmer March months being 2016, 2017, 2010, 2002, and 2015. The difference in rankings between NASA and NOAA is mostly due to how they handle data-sparse regions such as the Arctic, where few surface weather stations exist. The rankings for March were cooler than we've seen in recent years thanks to the presence of colder weather than average over much of Europe, plus the presence of cool ocean temperatures over the Eastern Pacific from a weak La Niña event.
Global ocean temperatures during March 2018 were the fifth warmest on record, and global land temperatures were the seventh warmest on record. Global satellite-measured temperatures in March 2018 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the sixth or ninth warmest in the 40-year record, according to the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) and RSS, respectively.

Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for March 2018, the 9th warmest March for the globe since record keeping began in 1880. Record warmth was observed across parts of eastern Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia, which corresponds with the locations that had the most notable warm temperature departures from average (+3.0°C [+5.4°F] or higher) during the month. No land or ocean areas experienced record cold temperatures during March 2018. Image credit: National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).