2025 was so hot it pushed Earth past critical climate change mark, scientists say
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
twodogsbarking
(17,531 posts)BumRushDaShow
(165,396 posts)Bayard
(28,447 posts)And trump dumped the Paris Agreement.
Roy Rolling
(7,411 posts)Fossil fuels is too timid to have impact.
Burning of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, whatever is a culprit.
By using a broad and general term each individual culprit gets a free pass. Where are the branding experts on this? A term that screams WE WILL ALL DIE should be invented. Its hyperbole but you get the picture.
I dont use fossil fuelsmy car runs on petrol. ⛽️
Remember, were dealing with people who hate Obamacare but love their ACA insurance.