2025 Set To Become 2nd Or 3rd Warmest Year On Record, Says European Climate Agency
November 2025 recorded an average surface air temperature of 14.02 degree Celsius, which is 0.65 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for the month.
2025 is currently tied with 2023 to be the second-warmest year on record, according to new data published by Europe's climate agency Copernicus.
Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said the year is virtually certain to end as the second or third-warmest ever recorded, behind 2024.
C3S said the global average temperature anomaly for January to November 2025 stands at 0.60 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average or 1.48 degree Celsius above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level.
The agency also said November 2025 was the third-warmest November globally.
The month saw notably warmer-than-average temperatures across northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean, along with several extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones in Southeast Asia that caused widespread and catastrophic flooding and loss of life.
"For November, global temperatures were 1.54 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and the three-year average for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time," said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate.
"These milestones are not abstract - they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," she aid.
November 2025 recorded an average surface air temperature of 14.02 degree Celsius, which is 0.65 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for the month.
It was 0.20 degree Celsius cooler than the warmest November on record, in 2023, and 0.08 degree Celsius cooler than November 2024.
C3S said November 2025 was 1.54 degree Celsius above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level. It was the second month this year, after October 2025, to exceed 1.50 degree Celsius since April 2025.
The agency said that while 2025 may not cross 1.5 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial benchmark on an annual basis, the 2023-2025 average is likely to exceed 1.5 degree Celsius for the first time in the instrumental record.
The Paris Agreement, adopted by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Warming has already crossed 1.3 degrees Celsius and global emissions continue to rise.
According to the WMO, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit under the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over a 20- or 30-year period, not a single year.
The Berlin-based climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics, in a report published on Thursday, said the world will very likely reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the early 2030s.
