The planet is on track to record its second hottest year on record in 2025, tied with 2023 after a historic peak in 2024, the European Global Warming Observatory announced on Tuesday.
Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service reaffirms that global temperatures are on track to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – the threshold considered safer in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Temperatures increased by 1.48°C on average between January and November, “currently tied with 2023 as the second warmest year on record”, according to the service’s monthly update.
“The three-year average for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5°C for the first time,” Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ climate strategy lead, said in a statement.
“These steps are not abstract: they reflect accelerating climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Burgess said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in October that the world would not be able to contain global warming below 1.5°C in the coming years.
Last month was the third warmest November on record, with the temperature 1.54°C above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus, with the average surface air temperature reaching 14.02°C.
Such incremental increases may seem small, but scientists warn that this is already destabilizing the climate and making storms, floods and other disasters more violent and more frequent.
“The month was marked by a number of extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones in Southeast Asia, causing catastrophic flooding and loss of life,” the monitor said.
Fight against fossil fuels
The Philippines was ravaged by back-to-back typhoons that killed some 260 people in November, while Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand were hit by massive flooding.
The global average temperature for the Northern Hemisphere autumn, September to November, was also the third highest on record after 2023 and 2024.
“Temperatures were generally above average worldwide and particularly in northern Canada, over the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica,” the observer said, adding that there were notable cold anomalies in northeastern Russia.
Copernicus takes its measurements using billions of satellite and weather records, both on land and at sea, and their data dates back to 1940.
Global temperatures have been driven increasingly by human emissions of greenhouse gases, largely from fossil fuels burned on a large scale since the industrial revolution.
Nations agreed to abandon fossil fuels at the UN’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, but ambitions have stalled since then.
The COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, concluded last month with an agreement that avoided a new explicit call for the phase-out of oil, gas and coal over objections from fossil fuel-producing countries.
