ROME (AP) — The world experienced its third-warmest July on record this year, the European Union agency that tracks global warming said Thursday, with temperatures easing slightly for the month as compared with the record high two years ago.
Despite the slightly lower global average temperature, scientists said extreme heat and deadly flooding persisted in July.
“Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over — for now. But this doesn’t mean climate change has stopped,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “We continued to witness the effects of a warming world.”
The EU monitoring agency said new temperature records and more climate extremes are to be expected unless greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are brought down. On July 25, Turkey recorded its highest-ever temperature of 50.5 C (122.9 F) as it battled wildfires.
While not as hot as July 2023 or July 2024, the hottest and second-hottest on record, the Copernicus report said that the planet's average surface temperature last month was still 1.25 C (2.25 F) above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, before humans began the widespread burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
Greenhouse gases released from the burning of fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change. Deforestation, wildfires and many kinds of factories also release heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere.
Despite a somewhat cooler July, the 12-month period between August 2024 and July 2025 was 1.53 C above pre-industrial levels, exceeding the threshold set in 2015 to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 C (2.7 F).
Globally, 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history. Europe is warming faster than any other continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to Copernicus.
The planet last year temporarily surpassed the warming target set at the 2015 Paris climate pact. But that target, of limiting warming within 1.5 C (2.7 F) of pre-industrial levels, is defined as a 20-year average and the world has not yet breached that threshold.
Copernicus is the European Union’s earth observation system based on satellite and on-the-ground data collection. Britain rejoined the climate agency in 2023.
Julien Nicolas, a senior Copernicus scientist, said it was important to view last month's decrease in the context of two anomalous years of warming.
“We are really coming out from a streak of global temperature records that lasted almost two years,” Nicolas said. “It was a very exceptional streak."
He added that as long as the long-term warming trend persists, extreme weather events will continue to happen.
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