Global temperatures in 2025 did not quite reach the heights of 2024, thanks to the cooling influence of the natural La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific, new data from the European Copernicus climate service and the Met Office shows. But the last three years were the world's warmest ever recorded, bringing the planet closer to breaching international climate targets. Despite natural cooling from La Niña, 2025 was still much warmer than temperatures even a decade ago, as humanity's carbon emissions continue to heat the planet. That will inevitably lead to further temperature records – and worsening weather extremes – unless emissions are sharply reduced, scientists warn. If we go twenty years into the future and we look back at this period of the mid-2020s, we will see these years as relatively cool, said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus. The global average temperature in 2025 was more than 1.4C above pre-industrial levels from the late 1800s - before humanity started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, according to Copernicus and Met Office data. While last year might not have been the hottest on record worldwide, extreme weather events linked to global warming continued. The Los Angeles fires of January and Hurricane Melissa in October were two examples of extreme weather that scientists have found to be likely influenced by climate change. The continued warmth brings the world closer to breaching the international target to try to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This target, agreed upon by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aims to prevent some of the much more severe consequences of climate change that 2C of warming would bring. Looking at the most recent data, it looks like we will exceed that 1.5-degree level of long-term warming by the end of this decade, Burgess warned.