Despite a respite in the Records series, July 2025 ranks third in the hottest months of July ever measured on Earth, Copernicus announced Thursday. It was on average 1.25 degree warmer than a month of July from the pre-industrial era.
‘Two years after the hottest July ever recorded, the recent series of world temperature records is over. For the moment. But that does not mean that climate change has stopped ‘, underlines Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Observatory Copernicus on climate change (C3S).
As in June, July shows an inflection: it was an average of 1.25 degree Celsius warmer than a month of July from the pre-industrial era (1850-1900) and the 1.5 degree of warming, registered in the Paris Agreement, has been regularly crossed for two years. But the months of July of the last three years remain the three warmest ever recorded.
This temperature increase, which may seem minimal, is enough, have shown scientists, to make storms, heat waves, droughts and other extremely more deadly and destructive weather.
Heat waves and floods
And above all, underlines Mr. Buontempo, ‘we continue to observe the effects of global warming during events such as extreme heat waves and catastrophic floods in July’.
Last month, the thermometer exceeded 50 degrees not only in the Persian Gulf and Iraq, but also in Türkiye for the first time; Torrential rains have killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan; Fires have ravaged tens of thousands of hectares, especially in Canada.
In Spain, more than a thousand deaths were allocated by a public heat institute in July, half more than at the same period of 2024.
The urgency is therefore still there, explains Mr. Buontempo, while the world continues to burn ever more oil, coal and gas, whose combustion releases CO2. ‘Unless we quickly stabilize the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we must expect not only to new temperature records, but also to worsen these impacts, and we must prepare for it’.
Regional contrasts
The global temperature averages are calculated using billions of satellite and meteorological surveys, on land and at sea. The historic data of Copernicus date back to 1940.
Last month, 11 countries and territories experienced their hottest July since at least 1970, including seven in Asia (China, Japan, North Korea, Tadjikistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Malaysia), according to AFP calculations from this data.
Without equal the records of previous summers, a large part of Europe has been above normal, especially in the Nordic countries.
To this is added a record drought on more than half of the European soils and around the Mediterranean between July 1 and 10, unheard of since the start of observations in 2012, according to AFP analysis of the latest available data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO).
On the other hand, temperatures were under normal in North and South America, India and parts of Australia or Africa, as well as in Antarctica.
Overheating seas
On the surface of the oceans, July was the 3rd month of the hottest July. But locally, several monthly records have been broken: in the Norway Sea, in some parts of the North Sea, the North Atlantic to the west of France and the United Kingdom …
Last month, the extent of the Arctic pack ice was 10% less than the average, ranking second in the lowest for a month in July for 47 years of satellite observations, practically equally with 2012 and 2021.
In Antarctica, the sea ice area is third in the weakest ever recorded for this month.
/ATS