The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) revealed on Wednesday that 2025 was the third warmest year ever recorded globally. According to the historical data series, the global average temperature was just 0.01 degrees Celsius below the 2023 mark and 0.13 degrees Celsius below the absolute record set in 2024. This new report underscores that the last three years (2023, 2024, and 2025) represent the three-year period with the highest temperatures since reliable records began, consolidating a trend of accelerated warming that concerns the international scientific community.
Analysis of the recent historical series shows that while 2025 did not surpass the 2024 high-water mark—which remains the warmest year to date—the minimal difference between these periods demonstrates that natural variability, such as El Niño and La Niña cycles, is being overcome by anthropogenic climate forcing.
Current record: 2024 still leads the ranking. Second place: 2023, with a marginal difference from last year. Third place: 2025, maintaining the thermal anomaly above the safety limits suggested in the Paris Agreement.
Global temperature comparison: 2024 — 1st (Warmest), +0.13°C relative to 2025. 2023 — 2nd, +0.01°C relative to 2025. 2025 — 3rd, baseline.
From Brussels, officials at Copernicus highlighted that 2025 was marked by extreme weather phenomena, including prolonged marine heatwaves and intense precipitation in various regions of the planet.
"The fact that 2025 is the third warmest year, even without the full influence of a strong El Niño event as in 2024, is a testament to the inertia of global warming," the experts stated.
The report concludes that reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains the only way to curb the systematic increase in these thermal anomalies that threaten biodiversity and global food security.
