World Had 3rd Warmest September Amid String Of Global Heat Waves

Graphic from Berkeley Earth showing most of the 
world was once again much warmer than normal
in September, the 3rd hottest on record. No
data from NOAA due to government shutdown. 

 Every month, I highlight a report from NOAA that takes a snapshot at the global climate for the previous month. 

During October, I didn't give the September report because it didn't exist. At least not from NOAA.

The federal government shutdown meant nobody at NOAA compiled the data or wrote a report.

After awhile, remembered that other groups also put monthly reports together. One of them is Berkeley Earth, an organization that provides open source environmental and climate data.

Berkeley Earth concluded that the world's September was the third warmest on record. Only 2023 and 2024 were hotter. It's worth noting that September, 2025 was much, much warmer than any other September prior to 2023. The three most recent years have been in a league of their own. 

The trend line for this entire year makes it appear 2025 will easily end up as the third warmest year on record, behind 20342 unless the end of the year is incredibly cold.  Preliminary data indicates October was probably globally much warmer than the long term average. 

In September, 2025, the highest temperature relative to their local averages were in almost all of North America, northeast Asia, the Arctic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean and around much of Antarctica. 

As always in our climate change world, it was hard to find any cool spots. But also as usual, a patch of the North Atlantic was relatively cool.

Berkeley Earth says their data is pretty accurate, but not quite as accurate as they'd like.  The problem is  some missing data from NOAA.

I'm not sure what happened with that NOAA data, but my guess is it all goes back to NOAA's brass and the Trump administration. Cutbacks. Blocking any information that risks highlighting climate change. Incompetence at the top, but not among the rank and file scientists just trying to do their jobs despite the interference of political hacks above them.

Since late August. some of NOAA's climate archives are broken or incomplete. Berkeley Earth draws from many data services, so NOAA's Trump-induced shortcomings. 

For some reason, "(In) NOAA's flagship climate monitoring program, the defects are strongly clustered with NOAA failing to report nearly all observations from China, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Spain and certain other areas. 

These weather stations continue to be operated by their local meteorological agencies, but their observations have not been capture day NOAA aggression services."

Berkeley Earth said they hoped that NOAA or somebody else will incorporate the data, reducing the uncertainty in that data.  

OTHER MEASUREMENTS

Other organizations measure Earth's temperature on a monthly basis and came to the same conclusion as Berkeley Earth. 

The European Copernicus Climate Change Service also concluded September was the third hottest on record. 

Copernicus also gives us data for Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. The ice data is particularly  important because the Arctic always reaches its minimum ice extent in September, and Antarctica reaches its maximum.

Arctic sea ice had its 13th lowest minimum in the past Antarctic ice had its 3rd lowest maximum on record .

Not the worst news ever in the land of ice, but certainly not great, either.