St. Petersburg sets temperature record
The temperature in St. Petersburg, known as Russia’s northern capital, climbed to 21.5 degrees Celsius on Wednesday – the highest-ever reading for that day of the year, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center has said.
“This is a new daily record for the maximum air temperature for April 10, and is as much as 4.8 degrees higher than the previous record registered on the same day in 1890,” Mikhail Leus wrote in a post on Telegram on Wednesday.
While St. Petersburg residents flocked to outdoor cafes and parks to enjoy the warm weather, climate experts say the unusual temperature is yet another indicator of climate change’s impact on Russia, from prolonged wildfire seasons to melting permafrost.
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Tuesday that March was the hottest on record, and the tenth straight month of historic heat. Every month since June 2023 has beaten the “hottest ever” milestone, experts noted, adding that March 2024 was no exception.
Globally, last month was 1.58 degrees warmer than an average March during the “pre-industrial” reference period of 1850 to 1900, climate scientists said.
The average European temperature for the month was 2.12 degrees Celsius above the historical average, marking it the second-warmest March on record for the continent, according to C3S.
The agency said March temperatures were above average in parts of Antarctica, Greenland, eastern North America, eastern Russia, Central America, parts of South America, and southern Australia.
Fueled by a mix of human-caused warming and the El Nino climate pattern, all-time monthly highs were observed both in the atmosphere and in the oceans, C3S said.
The continued record-breaking heat comes after the year 2023 was officially declared the hottest on record, and likely the hottest in tens of thousands of years.
