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.