Temperatures are closing in on a threshold countries have been trying to avoid since signing the historic Paris Agreement, which the US is leaving.
Planet Earth has just lived through its third-warmest year on record, EU scientists said on Wednesday.
Last year was also the hottest on record for Antarctica, another alarm bell that climate change is even catching up with the remote, ice-covered continent that for decades appeared sheltered from it.
For the planet as a whole, 2025 came in as the third-hottest on record, according to new data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
The heat made extreme weather more dangerous, including the intensity of Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan that killed more than 1,000 people.
It also drove «nationally significant» water problems in the UK during its record hot summer.
How hot was 2025?
In 2025, average temperatures on Earth’s surface clocked in at 1.47C — higher than levels 150 years ago — following 1.6C in 2024, the warmest on record, and 2023 in second place.
The unprecedented heat of those past three years inched the world closer to a point it has been trying to avoid.
