May 2025 was second-hottest on record, EU scientists say

BRUSSELS — Last month was the world's second-warmest May on record, European scientists have found.

Feels like déjà vu? That's because it is.

The same scientists found that this April was also the second-warmest April globally on record. It followed a month of March that was the warmest March on record.

The month of May 2025 was 1.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial average levels, according to the monthly update of the European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring agency published today.

The good news is that this “breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5C above pre-industrial [times],” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. But the bad news is that “whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,” he added.

The scientific body also stated that northwestern Europe went through an “exceptionally dry spring.” It pointed out that parts of the region saw “the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979,” which led to the “lowest spring river flow across Europe since records began in 1992.”

The increase in global temperatures is mainly the result of the continuous burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. But under the Paris climate agreement adopted in 2015, countries committed to try to limit global warming to below 2C and ideally under 1.5C compared with preindustrial levels.

The EU itself also agreed to slash its greenhouse gas emissions under the Green Deal and reach climate neutrality by mid-century.