LONDON, 14th January, 2026 (WAM) -- Scientists have confirmed that 2025 was the world’s third warmest year on record, marking the third consecutive year with global temperatures exceeding 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Last year was 1.41 degrees above the baseline of 19th-century temperatures, behind 2024’s record heat and 2023, according to the Hadcrut5 dataset collated by the Met Office, UEA, and NCAS. Meanwhile, the European Copernicus Era5 analysis put temperatures at 1.47 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The Hadcrut5 dataset puts the average temperature over the past three years at 1.47 degrees above 1850 to 1900, while the Copernicus monitoring found they averaged more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Professor Tim Osborn, Director of UEA’s Climate Research Unit, said the previous two years had been made even hotter by a natural climate variation in the Pacific Ocean, the El Niño pattern, which added around 0.1 degrees to global temperatures.
That weakened in 2025 - revealing a clearer picture of underlying, human-driven warming, he said.
With analyses putting long-term temperatures 1.37 and 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, experts warned the world was approaching the 1.5-degree limit agreed by countries in the Paris climate agreement, to avoid the worst impacts of droughts, floods, extreme heat, wildfires and nature collapse.