While July 2025 in Greece did not experience the same extreme heat as in previous years—with meteorologists debating whether the single, prolonged event qualified as a heat wave or a more intense one—the month was globally one of the hottest ever recorded.
According to the European Copernicus Observatory, July 2025 ranked as the third warmest such month in Earth’s history, a stark reminder that climate change continues despite a brief pause in the series of monthly temperature records.
“Two years after the hottest June on record, the recent series of global temperature records has ended — for now. But this does not mean that climate change has stopped,” stressed Carlo Buondebo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Monitoring Service (C3S).
July 2025 was the hottest ever
On average, July 2025 was 1.25° Celsius warmer than any July in the pre-industrial era (1850-1900). This figure remains just below the 1.5° Celsius target of the Paris Agreement, a threshold that has been exceeded in most months over the last two years.
Scientists have shown that even a seemingly small average temperature increase is enough to trigger more frequent and destructive extreme weather events. These consequences were evident worldwide throughout the month:
- Extreme heat waves pushed temperatures above 50° Celsius in the Gulf, Iraq, and, for the first time on record, in Turkey.
- Torrential rains led to catastrophic floods that killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan. Wildfires scorched thousands of acres, primarily in Canada.
- In Spain, a public institute attributed more than a thousand deaths to the heat, a figure that was approximately 50% higher than in 2024.
Buondebo noted that the world remains in a state of emergency, as the continued burning of fossil fuels releases CO2 into the atmosphere. “If we do not quickly stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also worsening impacts, and we must prepare,” he warned.
The average temperatures are calculated based on billions of measurements from satellites and weather stations on land and at sea. This data, which the Copernicus observatory has been collecting since 1940, revealed that 11 countries or regions, including seven in Asia, recorded their warmest July since at least 1970.
Much of Europe, particularly the Nordic countries, also experienced temperatures that were well above normal. In contrast, temperatures were below seasonal norms in North and South America, India, parts of Australia, and Antarctica.
The record heat was also evident in the oceans, where July 2025 was the third warmest on record. In some regions, such as parts of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, individual temperature records were broken.
Related: Heatwaves to Shave 1.1% Off Greece’s GDP, New Study Warns
