The world experienced its warmest March on record, the European Union's Climate Change Monitoring Service said on Tuesday.
In fact, each of the last 10 months ranked as the hottest ever, compared to the corresponding months in previous years.
The twelve months ending in March also ranked as the hottest 12-month period ever recorded on the planet.
From April 2023 to March 2024, the average global temperature was 1.58 degrees Celsius above the average temperature in the pre-industrial period, from 1850 to 1900.
"It is a long-term trend with extraordinary records that we are very concerned about," the deputy director of the EU's Climate Change Monitoring Service, Samantha Burgess, told Reuters news agency.
"Looking at records like this - month after month - we really see that our climate is changing rapidly," she added.
Extreme weather and extreme temperatures wreaked havoc this year.
Drought fueled by climate change in the Amazon rainforest region sparked a record number of fires in Venezuela from January to March, while drought in South Africa destroyed crops and left millions facing starvation.
The main cause was human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, the EU's Climate Change Monitoring Service said.
Other factors that increased temperatures include El Niño - the weather phenomenon that warms surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
