2025 was not the hottest year on record. Earth is still on the brink of climate change
Global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius over the past three years, meaning Earth is on track to violate the Paris climate agreement by the end of this decade.
Amanda Montanez; Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service (data)
First, the good news: 2025 was not the hottest year on record. Now the bad news: Last year was the third hottest year on record, just one step behind 2023. More importantly, it marks three years since global temperatures have exceeded pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Data released on Tuesday by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows we are in a climate crisis.
“This is different than three years ago,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said at a news conference on Monday.
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The past 11 years have been the 11 hottest on record, underscoring a global warming trend driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If this trajectory doesn’t change rapidly, the world is on track to break the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord, which mandates countries to limit warming to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius and “well below” two degrees Celsius.
Amanda Montanez; Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service (data)
According to C3S, the global average temperature for 2025 was 1.47 degrees Celsius above the average from 1850 to 1900. This is only 0.01°C cooler than 2023; 2024 retains the title of hottest year on record, at 1.6°C above the pre-industrial global average – the first year to exceed 1.5°C.
The Paris Agreement considers average temperatures over several years. That’s why hitting the three-year temperature increase milestone – and having the hottest years in the last decade – is important evidence to show that we are close to a potential breach by the end of this decade. C3S found that this was more than a decade earlier than had been anticipated when the agreement was first negotiated.
“The world is rapidly approaching the long-term temperature limits set by the Paris Agreement. We are obliged to pass it; the choice we now have is how to manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on society and natural systems,” C3S director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
Achieving the Paris Agreement goals has been made even more difficult by the Trump administration, which has sought to undercut U.S. climate action at home and abroad. As his current term began a year ago, President Donald Trump moved to pull the US out of the agreement – an action he had taken in his first administration. And just a week ago Trump announced that he would go a step further and pull the US out of the climate treaty under which the Paris Agreement was negotiated, as well as several other related agreements.
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