Mazaj News (Web Desk) In 2025, the planet experienced its third hottest year on record, continuing a streak of extraordinary heat, with no relief expected in 2026, according to U.S. scientists and European climate monitors.
The past 11 years now rank as the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 holding the top spot and 2023 in second place, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the California-based nonprofit Berkeley Earth show.
For the first time, global temperatures averaged over 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the past three years, Copernicus reported in its annual review.
“The spike in warming observed from 2023 to 2025 has been extreme, indicating an acceleration in the rate of Earth’s heating,” Berkeley Earth noted in a separate analysis.
The 2015 Paris Agreement commits nations to keeping warming well below 2°C, ideally limiting it to 1.5°C—a target scientists say is necessary to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
In October, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that surpassing 1.5°C was “inevitable,” but stressed that the duration of this overshoot could be limited if greenhouse gas emissions are cut swiftly.
Copernicus added that the 1.5°C threshold could be reached by the end of this decade, more than ten years earlier than previously predicted.
Efforts to curb global warming suffered another setback last week when President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the U.S., the world’s second-largest emitter after China, from the core UN climate treaty.
In 2025, temperatures were 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels, slightly cooler than 2023 but following 1.6°C in 2024, according to EU climate data.
Around 770 million people experienced record-high annual temperatures where they live, while no region recorded a record-cold annual average, Berkeley Earth reported.
The Antarctic saw its warmest year ever, while the Arctic experienced its second-hottest year on record, according to Copernicus.
An analysis of Copernicus data by AFP last month found that Central Asia, the Sahel, and northern Europe recorded their hottest year ever in 2025.