According to a new report from Copernicus, Europe’s climate change service, 2025 ranked as the third hottest year ever recorded.
The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record—a worrying development. 2024 still holds the title of the hottest year on record, marking the first time average global temperatures temporarily surpassed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“This is a milestone none of us hoped to reach,” Mauro Facchini, head of Earth Observation at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space, said in a press conference ahead of the announcement. “The news is disheartening, and the urgency of climate action has never been more pressing. By tracking how our climate is shifting and the risks these shifts bring, we can prepare for a more climate-resilient future.”
It is now clear the world is poised to surpass the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C as agreed under the Paris Agreement. It is no longer a question of if, but when. Researchers suggest this could happen much sooner than anticipated. Based on current warming rates, the planet could cross this long-term global warming threshold by the end of the decade—more than a decade earlier than projected when the agreement was adopted in 2015.
Last year’s relatively lower temperatures were partly due to La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. While El Niño events, like those in 2023 and 2024, tend to raise global temperatures, La Niña events bring slight cooling. Even so, as the report highlights, 2025 was the warmest La Niña year ever recorded.
Despite this cyclical ocean pattern, global temperatures remained exceptionally high. January 2025 was the warmest January on record, and multiple regions experienced record annual temperatures—Antarctica saw its highest on-record annual average temperatures, while the Arctic recorded its second-highest. The northwestern and southwestern Pacific, northeastern Atlantic, far eastern and northwestern Europe, and central Asia also registered record-high annual temperatures.
Half of the world’s land area saw “more days than average” of intense heat stress—defined as days with a “feels-like” temperature of 32°C (89.6°F) or higher. In February, combined polar sea ice cover dropped to its lowest level since satellite monitoring began in the late 1970s.
Researchers emphasized the clear link—even if not widely recognized or acknowledged. Countries worldwide, including Türkiye, Japan, and Spain, faced record-breaking extreme heat last summer. Approximately 440 deaths were tied to January’s Los Angeles wildfires, and over 1,750 people perished in December floods and landslides in Southeast Asia. 2025 was also the second year on record with three Category 5 storms forming over the Atlantic Ocean. Climate change is increasing the likelihood of such extreme weather disasters.
“These long-term trends aren’t how society perceives climate change,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “It isn’t through global temperature trends but through extreme weather events—and 2025’s extreme events had significant impacts on human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure.”
Even if global emissions ceased entirely, warming would persist, as CO2 can linger in the atmosphere for centuries. However, every degree of reduced warming helps mitigate worsening extreme weather events.
“Shutting off the emissions tap is crucial, but we know the ‘bath’ will keep overflowing,” says Laurence Rouil, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. “So we can say that even with action, there will likely be more years like [2025] in the future. But that shouldn’t deter us from taking bold, urgent steps.”
