2025 was so hot it pushed Earth past critical climate change mark, scientists say [View all]
Source: CBS News/AP
December 30, 2025 / 8:18 AM EST
Climate change worsened by human behavior made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said. It was also the first time that the three-year temperature average broke through the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. Experts say keeping the Earth below that limit could save lives and prevent catastrophic environmental destruction around the globe.
The analysis from World Weather Attribution researchers, released Tuesday in Europe, came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet.
Temperatures remained high despite the presence of a La Niña, the occasional natural cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather worldwide. Researchers cited the continued burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — that send planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
"If we don't stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal" of warming, Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. "The science is increasingly clear." Extreme weather events kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-2025-critical-mark-eclipsed/
Link to World Weather Attribution REPORT site - Unequal evidence and impacts, limits to adaptation: Extreme Weather in 2025
Link to REPORT (PDF) - https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstreams/534120b9-36c6-4d68-83f9-8a67e012a578/download
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