Much of the globe baked during fourth hottest March on record

SCI-TECH

Much of the globe baked during fourth hottest March on record

Seth Borenstein The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, April 22, 2014 3:12PM EDT

In this combination of March 2014 photos, a slackline walker enjoys the sunny and warm weather in Duesseldorf, Germany; a jogger runs on the snow-covered grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington; and a worker, suffering from heat exhaustion, leaves her shift early at the salt evaporation ponds in Anse-Rouge, Haiti. (AP / Frank Augstein, Susan Walsh, Dieu Nalio Chery)

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WASHINGTON -- U.S. government forecasters calculated that for most of the Earth, last month was one of the hottest Marchs on record -- except in the United States.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday that it was the fourth hottest March in 135 years of records. The overall global temperature was 0.7 degree Celsius warmer than the 20th century average.

But in the United States, March was about a degree cooler than normal, or about a half a degree Celsius. It was the 43rd coolest March on record.

Slovakia had its hottest March on record while South Korea and Latvia had their second warmest. Northern Siberia was 5 C warmer than normal. Norway and Denmark averaged nearly 4 C warmer than normal.