The Earth 'sizzled' in March, and there's worse to come

An infrared image of the category-5 strength
Tropical Cyclone Fantala, described as the
 most powerful storm recorded in the Indian Ocean

The Earth sizzled in March with the most unusually warm month in recorded history as average land surface temperatures easily exceeded levels deemed by scientists to constitute dangerous climate change.

The abnormal weather has continued into April as the most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Indian Ocean dumped rain at rates reaching 300 mm an hour, and Australian scientists declared the worst coral bleaching event ever on the Great Barrier Reef.

Combined global land and sea-surface temperatures in March were 1.22 degrees above the 20th-century average, beating the previous record for the month - set just a year earlier - by almost one-third of a degree, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Each of the past 11 months have now broken global temperature records, the longest such streak in the agency's 137 years of data collection.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'Worse things in store': Steaming hot world sets more temperature records.”