January 2025 was the warmest January on record, surpassing the previous record set by January 2024, according to satellite data from the EU’s Copernicus program. The findings were unexpected as ongoing La Niña conditions in the Pacific typically cool down global temperatures.
The global average surface air temperature for the month reached 1.75° Celsius (3.15° F) above pre-industrial levels. The most dramatic variation, up to 6°C (10.8°F), was concentrated in northern Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian countries.
“The heat waves across much of the oceans have become larger and stronger, so the influence of La Niña is being overwhelmed,” Jennifer Francis, an Arctic expert at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in the U.S. not involved with the Copernicus report, told Mongabay by email. “The Arctic has been warming about four times faster than the globe as a whole, and right now it’s running a dangerous fever.”
In 2024, a record-breaking El Niño, known for driving up global temperatures, contributed to making every month between January and June the warmest on record for those months. According to Copernicus researchers, 18 out of the last 19 months had recorded temperatures at least 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels, breaching the threshold set out in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.
“January 2025 is another surprising month, continuing the record temperatures observed throughout the last two years,” Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement.
However, scientists caution that a few years of weather data don’t mean that Earth’s climate as a whole has exceeded the Paris goals. Such a conclusion would require decades of data.
Burning of fossil fuels has consistently heated the planet since the early 1900s, but the past decade has seen a dramatic rise in warming. The last nine years have been the nine warmest on record in the Arctic, for example, according to the 2024 Arctic Report Card released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“We know this abnormal ocean warming comes from the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, dumped into the atmosphere by our burning fossil fuels,” Francis wrote.
To turn the spate of record-smashing temperatures around, she added, we need to rapidly and dramatically reduce our use of oil, coal and methane-emitting natural gas, while also stopping deforestation.
Banner image: Arctic Sea ice fragments near Greenland float between two icebergs in 2022. Image by Adam Sébire/Climate Visuals (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
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