Global temperatures in 2025 ranked as the third-highest on record, according to analyses released by three major climate monitoring agencies, highlighting the continued acceleration of human-driven warming despite cooling influences from natural climate cycles, Bloomberg reports.

Data published on January 14 by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the UK Met Office and the US-based Berkeley Earth group showed that 2025 trailed only 2024 and 2023 in global heat levels. The findings indicate that last year remained exceptionally warm even as a La Niña phase in the equatorial Pacific Ocean — which typically suppresses global temperatures — developed during the year.

The result suggests that the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly overwhelming natural climate variability. “Human-caused warming is now really overwhelming inter-annual natural variability” in weather, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist in the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources division.

According to the agencies, global temperatures in 2025 were between 1.41C and 1.47C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. Copernicus estimated the year at 1.47C above that baseline, while Berkeley Earth placed it at 1.44C and the UK Met Office calculated 1.41C.

The data also indicate that the average global temperature over the past three years has exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time, breaching the symbolic threshold set by governments in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Copernicus estimates the world could fully surpass the 1.5C warming mark by mid-2029, around 13 years earlier than projected when the agreement was signed.

Researchers at Berkeley Earth said recent temperature trends suggest a potential acceleration in warming. “The warming spike observed from 2023-2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration,” the group wrote.

Scientists say multiple factors may be contributing to the recent surge in temperatures, including reductions in reflective low-level clouds and a decline in sulphur pollution from shipping — emissions that previously had a cooling effect on the atmosphere.

Other datasets broadly support the findings. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration recorded 2025 as marginally warmer than 2023, tying the two years as the second-hottest on record in its dataset. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found 2025 to be slightly cooler than 2023 but noted that the upper ocean — the top 700 metres — reached the highest temperatures ever recorded.

Extreme heat was widely felt across the planet. At least half of the world’s land areas experienced an above-average number of heat-stress days in 2025, defined as conditions that feel like at least 32C. In Greenland, temperatures in May climbed more than 12C above average in some areas, causing ice to melt 12 times faster than usual on May 19.

Because global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, scientists note that the past 11 years have been the 11 hottest on record, while the warmest 25 years have all occurred since 1998.