For many of us, the end of one year and the beginning of another brings about a period of reflection and contemplation. This includes the world’s foremost climate scientists, who warn that the average global temperature of 2025 was the third-highest on record.
While slightly cooler than 2023 and 2024, the planet remains alarmingly hot, taking its toll on both nature and humanity. These last three years are part of a trend of relentlessly rising temperatures. In fact, the last 11 years have been the warmest 11 since records began in 1850.
The poles continue to heat up rapidly. Last year, the Arctic remained persistently hotter than normal, while Antarctica reached its highest average temperature — more than doubling its previous record. Closer to home, the UK also had its hottest year. A study by the Met Office concluded that human-caused climate change made this event 260 times more likely to happen.
2025 also brought natural disasters across the globe, from wildfires in Los Angeles to Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean, and extreme heat and droughts across much of Europe. Researchers found that all of these events were made more likely and more severe due to global warming, underlining the serious consequences of climate change.
Climate scientists have another reason to be worried about temperatures remaining so high. In 2023 and 2024, a natural weather event called El Niño was thought to be partly responsible for record temperatures. However, no El Niño occurred in 2025, leading scientists to believe that climate change may have progressed further than previously thought.
In 2015, world leaders signed the Paris Agreement, promising to limit global warming to 1.5°C. This threshold is widely considered necessary to prevent the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. Now it is thought that we will breach that limit before the end of 2030 — a decade earlier than predicted at the signing of the Paris Agreement — despite pledges from countries to reduce emissions and transition to renewables.
After a year of disturbing new extremes, it is clear we are at a cliff edge. Without serious action, this year’s records will become the new normal. We must stop our reliance on fossil fuels and drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions — for the sake of humanity and the planet.
Photo by Tien Do on Unsplash