Environment

March 2015: Another Warmest Month on Record for the Planet

March 2015 was Earth's warmest March since global record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA's National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) on Friday. NASA rated March 2015 as the 3rd warmest March on record (small differences in analysis techniques can lead to slightly different rankings from agency to agency, and the two estimates were quite close to each other.) March 2015's warmth makes the year to date period (January - March) the warmest such period on record, and the past twelve months the warmest twelve-month period in recorded history. By NOAA's reckoning, seven of the past eleven months (May, June, August, September, October, and December 2014, along with March 2015) have tied or set new record high monthly temperatures. According to NASA, March 2015 had the 5th largest departure from average for warmth of any month in recorded history.