Scientists announced on Thursday that last month was the third warmest July on record for the planet, which included a new national temperature record for Turkiye of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 Fahrenheit).
July continued a pattern of extreme climate conditions that scientists attribute to human-induced global warming, despite a temporary pause in new global temperature records.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the average global surface air temperature in July was 16.68°C, which is 0.45°C above the 1991-2020 average for the month. Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S, stated, “Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over—for now.” He added, “But this doesn’t 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.”
While not as hot as the record-breaking July 2023 and the second-warmest July 2024, the planet’s average surface temperature last month was still 1.25°C higher than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when fossil fuels were first burned on an industrial scale. The 12-month period from August 2024 to July 2025 was 1.53°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, surpassing the 1.5°C limit that was set as a maximum in the 2016 Paris Agreement to curb global warming.
The primary cause of climate change is the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. Last year was the hottest year on record. The world has not officially exceeded the 1.5°C target, which is a long-term global average temperature over several decades. However, some scientists are now arguing that remaining below this threshold is no longer a realistic goal. They are urging governments to accelerate cuts to CO2 emissions to minimize the degree of overshoot and mitigate the rise in extreme weather events. C3S has temperature records dating back to 1940, which are cross-referenced with global data that goes back to 1850.
