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Global temperatures at near historic highs in March: EU monitor

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe’s climate monitor said on Tuesday, prolonging an extraordinary heat streak that has tested scientific expectations.In Europe, it was the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent warming faster than any other.The world meanwhile saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell of record or near-record-breaking temperatures that has persisted since July 2023.Since then, virtually every month has been at least 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than it was before the industrial revolution when humanity began burning massive amounts of coal, oil and gas. March was 1.6C (2.9F) above pre-industrial times, prolonging an anomaly so extreme that scientists are still trying to fully explain it.”That we’re still at 1.6C above preindustrial is indeed remarkable,” said Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “We’re very firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change,” she told AFP.- Contrasting extremes – Scientists warn that every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts.Climate change is not just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all that extra heat being trapped in the atmosphere and seas by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.Warmer seas mean higher evaporation and greater moisture in the atmosphere, causing heavier deluges and feeding energy into cyclones, but also affecting global rainfall patterns.March in Europe was 0.26C (0.47F) above the previous hottest record for the month set in 2014, Copernicus said.It was also “a month with contrasting rainfall extremes” across the continent, said 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 said.Elsewhere in March, scientists said that climate change intensified an extreme heatwave across Central Asia and fuelled conditions for extreme rainfall which killed 16 people in Argentina.- Persistent heat -The spectacular surge in global heat pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record.Last year was also the first full calendar year to exceed 1.5C: the safer warming limit agreed by most nations under the Paris climate accord.This represented a temporary, not permanent breach, of this longer-term target, but scientists have warned that the goal of keeping temperatures below that threshold is slipping further out of reach.Scientists had expected that the extraordinary heat spell would subside after a warming El Nino event peaked in early 2024, and conditions gradually shifted to a cooling La Nina phase.But global temperatures have remained stubbornly high, sparking debate among scientists about what other factors could be driving warming to the top end of expectations.The European Union monitor uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its climate calculations.Its records go back to 1940, but other sources of climate data — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further in the past.Scientists say the current period is likely the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.

US ‘turns a blind eye’, says American-Palestinian after son killed by Israel

American-Palestinian Muhammad Rabee feels abandoned by the United States, he told AFP on Monday, a day after Israeli forces killed his 14-year-old son during a family visit in the occupied West Bank.Rabee’s family live in New Jersey, and like the vast majority of Palestinians from the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya, are dual citizens, but the father said Washington “turns a blind eye” to soaring Israeli attacks and abuses against them.The sorrow on his face showing even from behind his large sunglasses, Rabee carried the body of his son Amer, shrouded in a Palestinian flag, through the streets of Turmus Ayya as dozens of residents came out to pay their final respects.An AFP correspondent said some were waving flags and chanting slogans as the funeral procession made its war from the local morgue to a mosque, and finally on to the cemetery.After the shooting that killed his son and wounded two other teenagers in Turmus Ayya, near a main road through the West Bank, Rabee said he has a message to US President Donald Trump.Trump must “stop this situation, stop sending weapons” to Israel that are then used “to kill his people”, Rabee said, meaning American citizens like him.The mayor of Turmus Ayya, Lafi Shalabi, told AFP that the three boys were hit with live fire as they were picking green almonds.One of the two wounded, who are both 14, is also a US citizen, he said.But Israel’s military said they were “terrorists” who hurled rocks on cars travelling on the road.The military released a black-and-white video showing three individuals, one of whom appears to throw an indiscernible item.Rabee said that the “video is not accurate” and does not prove that his son had thrown rocks.”There were six bullets in his body, two in his heart, two in his shoulder, and two in his face,” said the father.- ‘Forgotten citizens’ -Rabee said that in past cases of attacks around Turmus Ayya, the US embassy has usually accepted the Israeli version of events, despite evidence showing violence from Israeli settlers under army protection, “assaults, killings, arson, and theft of Palestinian land”.”All of these things — the US embassy turns a blind eye to them”, he said.Some residents share his view.Majdi Arif, a retired teacher who lived in New Jersey for two decades, said their concerns often go unanswered.”Usually, the US embassy does nothing,” or reports cases to the Israeli government, “which is useless to us”, he told AFP.Turmus Ayya is located near the Israeli settlement of Shilo, whose residents according to Shalabi have been involved in attacks on Turmus Ayya.The Palestinian health ministry as well as mayor Shalabi said an Israeli settler was present with the soldiers at the time of the shooting.Yaser Alkam, head of Turmus Ayya’s foreign relations department, said that “Palestinian-Americans in Turmus Ayya are simply disappointed… we are the forgotten citizens” of the United States.”We’ve reached out to the US embassy many, many times”, he said, to no avail.The US State Department told AFP it offers its “sincerest condolences to the family on their loss.””We acknowledge the IDF initial statement that expressed that this incident occurred during a counter-terrorism operation and that Israel is investigating,” it said, adding that out of “respect for the privacy of the family” it had no further comment.- Palestinians ‘targeted’ -“Turmus Ayya is made up of 80 percent Americans,” said Alkam.”When an Israeli soldier shoots at… young children, there is an 80 percent chance he’s hitting an American.”Alkam, who lived for 25 years in California, denounced daily Israeli army incursions into the town “for no reason” that often escalate rapidly and prove fatal for Palestinians, including children regularly shot for hurling rocks.He warned that with Trump’s “unconditional support” for the Israeli government, there will be even “more violence with impunity” against Palestinians.Violence has surged since the October 2023 start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, a separate Palestinian territory.At least 918 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since then, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.”Whether it’s the Israeli army, settlers, or police — the entire Palestinian people are being targeted”, said Shalabi.