2025 was third hottest year on record, experts say
The year 2025 was the third hottest on record, continuing a streak of unprecedented global heat, with no significant relief expected in 2026, according to US and EU climate experts.
The last 11 years are now the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 the hottest and 2023 in second place, reports the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and California-based non-profit Berkeley Earth, News.Az reports, citing AFP.
For the first time, global temperatures averaged over the past three years have exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, Copernicus noted in its annual report.
“The warming spike observed from 2023-2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth's warming,” Berkeley Earth said in a separate report.
The 2015 Paris Agreement commits nations to limit warming to well below 2°C, with efforts to keep it at 1.5°C—a target scientists say is critical to avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in October that exceeding 1.5°C was “inevitable,” but rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could limit the period of overshoot.
Copernicus added that the 1.5°C threshold “could be reached by the end of this decade—over a decade earlier than predicted.”
Efforts to curb global warming suffered another setback last week when former President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the United States—the world’s second-largest emitter after China—from the UN climate treaty.
Temperatures were 1.47C above pre-industrial times in 2025 -- just a fraction cooler than in 2023 -- following 1.6C in 2024, according to the EU climate monitor.
Some 770 million people experienced record-warm annual conditions where they live, while no record-cold annual average was logged anywhere, according to Berkeley Earth.
The Antarctic experienced its warmest year on record while it was the second hottest in the Arctic, Copernicus said.
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