OBSERVER: Global Climate Highlights 2025 – Insights from the Copernicus Climate Change Service
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According to the recently published Global Climate Highlights 2025 report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures remained close to historic highs in 2025, making it the third-warmest year on record and reinforcing the persistence of long-term warming trends. Alongside near-record global surface air and sea surface temperatures, the year was also marked by a range of extreme weather and climate events, illustrating how high temperatures on land and at sea caused significant impacts worldwide. In this Observer, we highlight key findings of the Global Climate Highlights 2025 report and explore how Copernicus climate data informs policy making and public debate.
The third-warmest year on record
In global terms, 2025 ranked as the third-warmest year on record, following the unprecedented temperatures observed in 2023 and 2024, the latter being the warmest year on record. The global average temperature reached 14.97°C, which was 0.59°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.47°C above the estimated 1850–1900 pre-industrial level. While marginally cooler than 2023 (by just 0.01°C), 2025 continued a sequence of exceptionally warm years, with all of the past 11 years (2015–2025) ranking amongst the 11 warmest years on record. Although 2025 itself did not exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold, the three-year average for 2023–2025 surpassed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level for the first time since global temperature analyses began.
Annual surface air temperatures were above the 1991–2020 average across 91% of the globe, with conditions much warmer than average being recorded on nearly half of the Earth’s surface. Globally, January 2025 was the warmest January on record, while several other months ranked second warmest amongst their respective months of year. Despite being less extreme than 2024, the persistence of widespread warmth underscored the continuation of long-term warming trends.
“The data for 2025 show that exceptional global temperatures are no longer isolated events but part of a persistent warming trend. C3S data provide a clear, evidence-based picture of how close the climate system is to the limits set by the Paris Agreement.”
– Carlo Buontempo
Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service
Data in headlines
Published in early January, the report received extensive international media coverage shortly after the release of the underlying data. Several major outlets drew directly on Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) findings, using it as a reference for reporting on global temperature trends and their implications.
Among the most prominent were The Guardian, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera , and Die Welt, each highlighting different aspects of the report while relying on Copernicus data to frame their analysis. In France, Le Monde focused on global temperature anomalies and the persistence of extreme conditions, presenting data visualisations based on C3S findings to illustrate how 2025 compared with previous record-breaking years.
Across Europe and beyond, coverage consistently positioned the report within the context of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C threshold and the growing frequency of climate extremes. In the United States, TIME magazine similarly referenced C3S data in its reporting on global temperature rankings, linking Copernicus indicators to wider discussions on climate risk, extremes, and the narrowing window for effective climate action.
In addition to extensive media coverage, the report’s reach extended into policy and expert circles, including direct engagement with parliamentary audiences. The Global Climate Highlights 2025 informed a dedicated parliamentary briefing, in which Copernicus data were presented to support discussion amongst policymakers on recent global temperature trends and their implications for climate action. European Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra also referenced the report on social media, summarising key metrics and noting their relevance for climate policy. Similarly, the World Resources Institute (WRI) shared the report’s findings, using Copernicus data to discuss global average temperature trends and the implications for meeting Paris Agreement objectives. Together, these reactions illustrate how the findings of the report were taken up across mass media, policymaking, and the global climate expert community.
Paris Agreement targets and current warming levels
Estimates derived from three independent methods, based on C3S data and calculated in line with the World Meteorological Organization’s Global State of the Climate 2024 method, indicate that by the end of 2025, the Earth’s climate system had warmed by approximately 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels. While temperatures from individual years continue to fluctuate around this level, the underlying long-term warming trend is clear, as shown in the figure below.
Importantly, although 2025 itself did not exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the average global temperature for 2023-2025 did surpass this threshold for the first time since global temperature analyses began. This illustrates how narrow the margin has become between current warming levels and the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature threshold.
Pronounced temperature anomalies in the polar regions
Temperature anomalies in 2025 were particularly pronounced in the polar regions. In the Antarctic, the annual temperature anomaly reached +1.06°C above average, the highest on record, while the Arctic recorded its second-highest anomaly at +1.37°C, surpassed only in 2016. By contrast, temperature anomalies in the tropics were lower than in 2023 and 2024. This regional pattern reveal that cooler tropical conditions slightly lowered the global average, while record or near-record warmth in the Arctic and Antarctic partly offset this effect, resulting in 2025 being only marginally cooler than 2023 at the global scale.
Temperatures in Europe in 2025 were also the third warmest on record, with an average temperature of 10.41°C, 1.17°C above the 1991–2020 reference period average. This was 0.30°C below the record of 2024 (1.47°C above average) and only 0.02°C cooler than the value for 2020 (1.19°C above average), the second-warmest year.
Sea surface temperatures and sea ice
Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the oceans outside the polar regions (60°S-60°N) remained historically high throughout 2025, despite the absence of El Niño conditions for most of the year. The annual average SST reached 20.73°C, which was 0.38°C above the 1991–2020 average, ranking as the third highest on record, behind 2023 and 2024. In this context, 2025 was the warmest La Niña year on record for both global air temperature and SST.
Sea ice conditions in both polar regions remained near record-low levels during 2025. In the Arctic, monthly sea ice extent reached record lows for the time of year from December 2024 through March 2025, with the annual maximum in March marking the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. While the reduction in sea ice extents was less extreme during summer, it remained well below average. By late autumn the ice extent again approached historic lows, ranking second lowest in November and lowest in December.
Around Antarctica, sea ice extent began the year near average but declined rapidly, reaching its fourth-lowest annual minimum in February. Together, record-low Arctic sea ice for the time of year and much-below-average Antarctic sea ice in February resulted in the lowest global sea ice cover for any month since satellite observations began in the late 1970s.
Extreme weather events in 2025
In 2025 extreme weather events had far-reaching impacts on human health, natural systems, and the built environment, with flooding, extreme heat, drought, and wildfires, often occurring in combination. Flash floods were triggered by intense, and in some cases, record precipitation – such as in the United States in February and across China, and South Korea, as well as by floods caused by melting glaciers in parts of South Asia in Pakistan and India. Larger-scale flooding also resulted from atmospheric rivers, monsoon rainfall, large low-pressure systems, and numerous tropical cyclones. Provisional data from NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) indicate that 103 tropical storms occurred globally in 2025, of which 50 reached tropical cyclone strength and 20 became major tropical cyclones. Many of these storms affected populations and infrastructure around the world.
Europe faced repeated storms and precipitation events throughout the year, with an exceptionally active windstorm season across several countries. In the UK alone, the national meteorological service named six storms during the 2024-2025 season, several of which were associated with record-breaking rainfall and flooding.
At the same time, numerous heatwaves affected Asia, North America, Africa, and Europe, frequently breaking local or national temperature records. In some regions, these coincided with marine heatwaves, amplifying impacts on ecosystems and infrastructure.
Prolonged dry conditions combined with extreme heat fuelled the spread and intensification of wildfires, particularly in Europe and North America. According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the highest annual total wildfire emissions in the past two decades were recorded in Europe, while in Canada annual wildfire emissions were the second-highest on record.
Long-term trends and the importance of continued monitoring
The Global Climate Highlights 2025 report documents a climate system operating at historically high temperatures, with persistent warmth on land and at sea, and a growing incidence of extreme weather events. Despite year-to-year fluctuations in temperature, the longer-term trends identified by Copernicus highlight the narrowing gap between current conditions and the temperature limits set under the Paris Agreement. As evidenced by the data for 2025, continued, consistent climate monitoring remains essential for understanding how the climate is changing and for informing timely, evidence-based decisions in the years ahead.
