Brussels: The year 2025 is likely to become the world’s second or third-warmest year on record, only marginally behind the extreme global heat of 2024, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The agency issued its latest assessment on Tuesday, warning that the planet is continuing to warm at an alarming pace.
The update follows last month’s COP30 climate summit, where countries failed to agree on stronger commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The summit exposed widening geopolitical divides, with the United States scaling back climate efforts and several nations pushing to dilute carbon-cutting measures.
C3S noted that 2025 will likely complete the first-ever three-year stretch in which global temperatures remained above 1.5°C compared with the 1850–1900 pre-industrial baseline, when large-scale fossil fuel use began.
“These milestones are not abstract – they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at C3S.
This year saw extreme weather disasters across continents. Last month, Typhoon Kalmaegi left more than 200 people dead in the Philippines, while Spain battled its most severe wildfires in thirty years — conditions scientists say were intensified by climate change.
Last year was officially the hottest year on record. Although natural climate variations cause temperatures to fluctuate, scientists say long-term warming is undeniable and driven mainly by emissions from fossil fuels.
The World Meteorological Organization earlier stated that the past decade has been the warmest ten-year period recorded since systematic observations began.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries pledged to limit global warming to 1.5°C to avert the worst climate impacts. While the world has not yet permanently crossed that threshold — which applies to long-term averages — the UN warned this year that the 1.5°C goal is no longer realistically achievable. It urged governments to accelerate emissions cuts to reduce how far the world overshoots the target.
C3S temperature data is maintained using records dating back to 1940 and aligned with global datasets that reach back to 1850.
