A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
2025 was one of the hottest years on record according to both federal and international scientists. That means the planet is on the brink of a crucial climate change threshold. Here's NPR's Lauren Sommer.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: Officially, 2025 is taking third place. It's the third-hottest year globally on average going back to the Industrial Revolution. That makes it part of a concerning trend, says Samantha Burgess. She's deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which monitors climate for the European Union.
SAMANTHA BURGESS: The last three years in particular have been extremely warm compared to earlier years. These three years stand apart from those that came before.
SOMMER: 2024 still holds the top spot as the hottest on record because it had some extra heat. There was an El Nino, a natural cycle that raises temperatures globally. But 2025 wasn't an El Nino year and it's still Top 3, according to federal scientists. Burgess says that shows the clear impact of climate change.
BURGESS: The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dominated by the burning of fossil fuels.
SOMMER: Those temperatures brought some big impacts. There was a record amount of heat in the oceans. Sea ice in the Arctic was at the lowest level ever recorded last March, when it's supposed to peak. And snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was the third-lowest recorded.
CARLOS MARTINEZ: You know, it's not surprising. The science is very unequivocal about this.
SOMMER: Carlos Martinez is a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental nonprofit. He says 2025 almost hit 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a key number because countries have agreed to try to limit warming to that level under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Beyond that, research shows that storms, hurricanes and heat waves get even more intense.
MARTINEZ: We haven't, though, breached that threshold in a long-term trend basis. But we're heading in that direction.
SOMMER: The Trump administration is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The White House did not respond to questions about the temperature records. The last 11 years have been the hottest years since the Industrial Revolution, according to federal climate researchers. International scientists say that's highly likely to continue, with the world passing 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the decade.
Lauren Sommer, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS' "SNOWDEN'S JIG") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
