Europe saw hottest March on record, monitor says, as mercury in Israel set to spike

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, while the Continent saw the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service says, blaming the high temperatures for driving rainfall extremes.

The news comes as Israel is expected to be hit by a heatwave Tuesday, with temperatures in Beersheba and the western Negev region forecast to rise as high as 37°C (98.6° F), according to the Israel Meteorological service.

The world saw the second-hottest March ever recorded in the Copernicus dataset, hitting 1.6° C (2.9° F) above pre-industrial times, the European monitor says. It fell just 0.08°C (0.14° F) short of the previous record set in March 2024.

Meanwhile, March in Europe was 0.26° C (0.47° F) above the previous hottest record for the month set in 2014, Copernicus says.

It was also “a month with contrasting rainfall extremes” across the continent, says Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the Copernicus climate monitor.

Some parts of Europe experienced their “driest March on record and others their wettest” for about half a century, Burgess says.

Elsewhere in March, scientists say that climate change intensified an extreme heatwave across Central Asia and fueled conditions for extreme rainfall which killed 16 people in Argentina.