Scientists confirmed this week that 2025 was the world's third hottest year since at least 1850.
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| World temperatures compared to the long term average since 1850. As you can see, virtually the whole world was warmer than that average in 2025. The blob of white in the Pacific Ocean represents La Nina, which is supposed to cool the world a bit, but didn't last year. The white blob south of Greenland represents melt water from that ice cap, which keeps the North Atlantic cooler, |
As NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI tells us, 2025 was 1.17 degrees Celsius, or 2.11 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. Last year just barely missed tying 2023 as the second hottest year, missing it by 0.02 degrees Celsius or 0.04 degrees Fahrenheit.
At the start of 2025, climatologists said they expected the year to end up cooler than the previous two because a La Nina pattern had taken over for most of the year. La Ninas tend to cool the Earth slightly.
That 2025 was a La Nina year and still ranked as third hottest is worrisome, since climate change clearly overwhelmed the expected cooling.
NCEI added that it's now becoming routine for years to end up warmer than the 20th century average by more than 1 degree Celsius:
"Notably, the 10 warmest years in the 176-year record have all occurred since 2015. Of the 10 warmest years on record, former record-holders 2015 and 2016 have dropped to eighth and fourth place, respectively. While 2016 was the first year to exceed the 1.0 degrees C threshold, that benchmark has since been surpassed in 2020 and again in the last three consecutive years (2023-25)."
Another benchmark the NCEI noted was oceanic heat content. In 2025 it was the highest on record, breaking the record set the year before. In fact, 2025 was the fifth year in a row in which oceanic heat content hit record highs.
This is important, since more than 90 percent of excess heat in the Earth's system is absorbed by the ocean. This extra heat content becomes fuel that would further bolster future global warming, and can create more intense storms than a cooler ocean would. Hotter water also expands, which exacerbates sea level rise.
NCEI also broke down the 2025 climate year in review into continents. 2025 was North America's fourth warmest year. Nine of the continent's ten warmest years have happened since 2006. The rate of warming in North America was 0.15 degrees Celsius per decade in much of the 20th century. Since 1981, that warming rate has more than doubled to 0.34 degrees Celsius per decade.
Europe had its second warmest year on record. Asia was third warmest, South America was sixth warmest and Africa was seventh warmest. The Arctic region had its second warmest year and Antarctica had it fourth warmest year in 2025.
Sources other than NCEI helped give a fuller picture of the extraordinary global warmth of 2025. Per Yale Climate Connections:
"According to Berkeley Earth, 9.1 percent of the Earth's surface had a record-warm year, including 10.6 percent of land areas and 8.3 percent of ocean areas. They estimated that 770 million people - 8.5 percent of Earth's population - experienced a locally warm annual average in 2025, The largest population centers affected by record warmth in 2025 were mostly in Asia, including about 450 million people in China."
Carbon Brief added these stats to the 2025 mix:
Sea levels reached record highs in 2025, and sea level rise has accelerated noticeably in the past three decades.
Cumulative ice loss from the world's glaciers and from the Greenland ice sheet reached a new record high in 2025, contributing to sea level rise.
Concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide all reached record high levels in 2025.
Arctic sea ice saw its lowest winter peak on record and its 10th lowest summer minimum extent. Sea ice around Antarctica reached its third lowest summer minimum extent.
PREDICTIONS
The New Year has barely begun but experts are saying 2026 will bring us no relief from the recent climate changed-heat.
Carbon Brief is saying 2026 will be the second, third or fourth warmest on record, very similar to the temperatures we saw in 2023 and 2025.
Lingering La Nina might suppress temperatures a little in the opening months of the year, but an expected El Nino later in the year might bring 2026 to a hot finish, says the folks at Carbon Brief.
The Met Office in the UK is also saying 2026 will be among the top four warmest on record, and they're leaning toward this year being the second warmest year, coming in a bit cooler than the record holder 2024.
Berkeley Earth says the odds favor 2026 coming in at #4 on hottest year list, giving it a 51 percent chance of that happening. The odds that 2026 would come in 3rd place is 12 percent,; 2nd place 21 percent. They give 2026 a 10 percent chance that this year will be the hottest on record. The chances that this year will be merely the fifth warmest or cooler are just 6 percent, according to Berkeley Earth.
If you look at a chart of how each year's temperature compares to other years, you see that the world began warming rapidly at around 1980.
But the past three years have been way, way hotter than anything seen before. Nations and regulators, especially in Asia and in the world shipping industry have cut aerosol pollutants in recent years. These new environmental rules have allowed more sun to heat the Earth, since air pollution is blocking less of it.
That could at least partly explain why the past three years have been so out whack with the heat. The question now is, will this much faster pace of warming that started in 2023 continue or will it level off a bit? Nobody knows for sure, but the question is important.
It's bad enough that the world has been warming so fast since the 1980s. If we've entered a new, faster pace of climate change, we're definitely not ready for it.
Editor's Note: We'll soon do a followup post on how the United States did with climate in 2025, including an extraordinarily hot December in the western United States
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