Streak of global temperature records over for now, says European climate agency

New Delhi, Aug 7 (PTI) The recent streak of record-breaking global temperatures is over for now, according to Europe's climate agency Copernicus, even as July 2025 ranked as the third-warmest July on record worldwide.

The agency also reported that the past 12 months (August 2024 to July 2025) were 1.53 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average.

The agency said July's global average surface air temperature of 16.68 degrees Celsius was 0.45 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for the month.

It said July 2025 was 0.27 degree Celsius cooler than the record of July 2023 and 0.23 degree Celsius cooler than July 2024, which was the second warmest.

Scientists at Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said July 2025 was 1.25 degrees Celsius above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level.

"It was only the fourth month in the last 25 with a global temperature less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level," the European climate agency said in a statement.

"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over -- for now. But this does not mean climate change has stopped. We continued to witness the effects of a warming world in events such as extreme heat and catastrophic floods in July. Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of these impacts -- and we must prepare for that," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said.

Human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, have pumped large amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This has raised the planet's temperature, altered the climate and led to more frequent and severe floods, droughts, storms and other extreme weather events.

At the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, countries pledged to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The year 2024 was the first calendar year with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degrees Celsius limit refers to long-term warming over a 20 or 30-year period.

Scientists at Copernicus said the average sea surface temperature (SST) for July 2025 was 20.77 degrees Celsius, the third-highest value on record for the month, 0.12 degree Celsius below the July 2023 record.

Arctic sea ice extent was 10 per cent below average, ranking joint second-lowest for July in the 47-year satellite record, virtually tied with 2012 and 2021.

Antarctic sea ice extent was 8 per cent below average, ranking third-lowest on record for the month, a less extreme anomaly than those seen in July 2023 (15 per cent below average) and 2024 (11 per cent below average). PTI GVS RC