2025 likely to be second hottest year

 From The Guardian

This year is “virtually certain” to end as the second- or third-hottest year on record, EU scientists have found, as climate breakdown continues to push the planet away from the stable conditions in which humanity evolved.

Global temperatures from January to November were on average 1.48C higher than preindustrial levels, according to the Copernicus, the EU’s earth observation programme. It found the anomalies were so far identical to those recorded in 2023, which is the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

World leaders have promised to keep the planet from heating by 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. Scientists interpret the temperature target as a 30-year average, leaving a sliver of hope for meeting the goal after a period of overshoot even as individual months and years begin to cross the threshold.

“For November, global temperatures were 1.54C above preindustrial levels,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The three-year average for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5C for the first time.”

The agency’s monthly bulletin found that last month was the third-warmest November globally, with “notably” warmer temperatures recorded across northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean. The month was marked by a series of dangerous weather events including cyclones and catastrophic floods that swept away lives and homes across south and south-east Asia.

Average temperatures have risen sharply as a result of the blanket of carbon pollution smothering the Earth, which has strengthened weather extremes from heatwaves to heavy rains, but continue to vary from year to year based on natural factors. Warming El Niño conditions boosted global temperatures during 2023 and 2024 but gave way to weakly cooling La Niña conditions in 2025.

Copernicus found 2025 was tied with 2023 as the second-hottest year on record. “These milestones are not abstract,” said Burgess. “They reflect the accelerating pace of climate change, and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, planet-heating emissions have continued to climb – although the expansion of renewable energy has helped to curb the rise – along with average temperatures and the intensity of weather extremes.

The Copernicus findings echoed analysis from the World Meteorological Organization before the Cop30 summit in Brazil last month. The WMO found 2015 to 2025 would have been the 11 warmest years in an observational record that stretches back to 1850.

Source: Copernicus

Second hottest May ever

 From The Guardian

It has been an exceptionally dry spring in north-western Europe and the second warmest May ever globally, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Countries across Europe, including the UK, have been hit by drought conditions in recent months, with water shortages feared unless significant rain comes this summer, and crop failures beginning to be reported by farmers.

The new Copernicus data shows that May 2025 was the second-warmest May globally, with an average surface air temperature of 15.79C, 0.53C above the 1991-2020 average for May. The month was 1.4C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level. This interrupts a period of 21 months out of 22 where the global average temperature was more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial level.

Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), said: “May 2025 breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5C above pre-industrial. Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system.”

The 1.5 degrees is the climate target agreed by the 2015 Paris agreement. The target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been missed, but does show the climate emergency continues to intensify. Every year in the past decade has been one of the 10 hottest, in records that go back to 1850.

Dry weather has persisted in many parts of the world. In May 2025, much of northern and central Europe as well as southern regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Türkiye were drier than average. Parts of north-western Europe experienced the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979.

In May 2025, it was drier than average in much of north America, in the Horn of Africa and across central Asia, as well as in southern Australia, and much of both southern Africa and South America.

May also saw abnormally high sea surface temperatures in the north-eastern Atlantic, reaching the highest ever recorded, according to Copernicus.

The Woodhead Reservoir in Derbyshire. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Still more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial

 From Copernicus

February 2025 was the 19th month in a 20-month period in which the global-average temperature was more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial level. Dive into the analysis of the latest #C3S Climate Bulletin: climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-...