Climate change could move “into uncharted territory” if temperatures don’t fall by the end of the year, a leading scientist has told the BBC.

The warning came as new data showed last month was the warmest March on record, extending the run of monthly temperature records to ten in a row.

It’s fuelled concerns among some that the world could be tipping into a new phase of even faster climate change.

A weather system called El Niño is behind some of the recent heat.

Temperatures should temporarily come down after El Niño peters out in coming months, but some scientists are worried they might not.

“By the end of the summer, if we’re still looking at record breaking temperatures in the North Atlantic or elsewhere, then we really have kind of moved into uncharted territory,” Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told BBC News.

March 2024 was 1.68C warmer than “pre-industrial” times – before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels – according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

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