Global temperatures in 2025 marked the third hottest year ever recorded, extending an unprecedented run of extreme heat with little sign of relief in 2026, climate scientists from the European Union and United States said on Wednesday.
Read More: Regional temperature records broken across the world in 2025
According to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and Berkeley Earth, the last 11 years have been the warmest on record. The year 2024 ranked as the hottest, followed by 2023, underscoring a rapid acceleration in global warming trends linked to greenhouse gas emissions.
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Copernicus reported that, for the first time, average temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels over a three-year period. Berkeley Earth described the 2023–2025 spike as “extreme” and indicative of a faster warming pace than scientists had anticipated.
The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep global warming “well below” 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C — a threshold many experts believe could prevent cascading climate impacts. But Copernicus now warns the 1.5°C limit could be reached before the end of the decade, far earlier than previous projections.
UN Secretary General António Guterres has repeatedly cautioned that surpassing 1.5°C may be “inevitable”, but that the duration of this overshoot will depend on how quickly nations curb emissions. Efforts were dealt a blow last week after US President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal from the UN’s flagship climate treaty.
Globally, 2025 averaged 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels, with no region registering record-cold conditions. Berkeley Earth estimates that 770 million people experienced record annual heat, with the Antarctic logging its hottest year and the Arctic its second hottest.
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Scientists expect 2026 to maintain the upward trend. Copernicus says a potential El Niño event could make the year another contender for new temperature records, while Berkeley Earth projects 2026 is most likely to rank as the fourth warmest since measurements began in 1850.