Overview
- EU’s Copernicus/ECMWF and other groups report 2025 ranked third behind 2024 and 2023, with global temperatures about 1.47C above the pre‑industrial baseline and the past 11 years the warmest on record.
- For the first time, the 2023–2025 period averaged above 1.5C, and monitoring agencies warn the long-term threshold could be exceeded on a sustained basis later this decade, with some analyses pointing to around 2029.
- Scientists attribute the exceptional warmth primarily to human greenhouse-gas emissions, noting El Niño boosted 2023–2024 while a weak La Niña failed to cool 2025, with reduced aerosols and peak solar activity possibly adding short-term heat.
- Forecasts from Copernicus and Berkeley Earth suggest 2026 will be similarly hot, likely near the fourth-warmest on record, and a future El Niño could drive a new annual record.
- Reported impacts include record-warm conditions for hundreds of millions of people, Antarctic warmth and low polar sea ice, intensified disasters such as fires, floods and storms, and growing heat-plus-humidity risks in the Gulf region.