Data released by the European Union Center for Medium Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) on January 14 shows that 2025 continues to be in the group of hottest years in history, only slightly lower than 2023 by about 0.01 degrees Celsius, while 2024 is the hottest year ever recorded.
ECMWF said that the Earth has just gone through the first 3 years when the global average temperature is 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial era - a threshold that scientists warn climate change will cause serious impacts, including irreversible consequences.
1.5 degrees Celsius is not an absolute boundary. However, we know that every small part of a degree is very important, especially in exacerbating extreme weather phenomena," said Samantha Burgess, climate strategy leader at ECMWF.
According to the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments pledged to make efforts to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, measured by long-term average temperatures compared to the pre-industrial era.
However, not cutting enough greenhouse gas emissions means that this threshold may be exceeded before 2030 - about 1 decade earlier than the forecast when the agreement was signed, ECMWF said.
We will definitely overcome this threshold," said Carlo Buontempo, Director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, while emphasizing that the current choice is how to best manage this inevitable overshoot and the consequences for society as well as natural ecosystems.
According to ECMWF, exceeding the 1.5 degree C threshold in the long term - although only temporary - will lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including longer and more intense heat waves, along with stronger storms and floods.
In 2025, wildfires in Europe generated the highest total emissions ever recorded, while scientific studies confirmed that many specific weather phenomena have been exacerbated by climate change, including storm Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoons in Pakistan that killed more than 1,000 people due to floods.
The UK National Weather Service also confirmed their own data ranking 2025 as the third hottest year since records began in 1850.
