Pafos Press 9 September 2025
August 2025 was the third warmest ever recorded on Earth, with heatwaves in western Europe and Asia, according to data released today by the European climate change observatory Copernicus. Like July 2025, “August 2025 was the third warmest August on record,” the Copernicus service said in a statement. The average temperature on the surface of the Earth and the oceans was 1.29° Celsius warmer than in the pre-industrial era (1850-1900). The warmest and second warmest Augusts on record were those of 2023 and 2024, respectively.
At the beginning of each month, Copernicus releases data on the previous year for the entire planet, thanks to an analysis of data from satellites, ground-based observations and climate models. Its data, which cover the last 85 years, allow conclusions to be drawn each month on trends in global warming. In the summer season that has just ended, national meteorological services – of China, Japan, Portugal, Britain, etc. – had already announced that the last days of the summer of 2025 recorded the highest temperatures ever measured. “In southwestern Europe, the month brought the third major heat wave of the summer, accompanied by exceptional forest fires,” commented Samantha Burgess of the European center that manages the Copernicus service. “With the world’s oceans remaining unusually warm, these events highlight not only the urgency of reducing emissions, but also the critical need to adapt to increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events,” he added. In August, “Western Europe experienced above-average air temperatures. The Iberian Peninsula and southwestern France were particularly affected by heat waves,” the Copernicus Center noted. Spain suffered an unprecedented heat wave that lasted 16 days and caused more than 1,100 deaths, according to estimates by the Carlos III Health Institute. In France, record high temperatures were recorded on August 11 in cities such as Bordeaux (41.6° Celsius), Bergerac (42.1° Celsius) and Angoulême (42.3° Celsius), according to the French national meteorological service. “Outside Europe, temperatures were higher on average in northern Siberia, parts of Antarctica, China, the Korean peninsula, Japan and the Middle East,” the Copernicus service noted. In the last three months (June-August), it was the northern hemisphere that experienced the greatest increase in temperatures compared to the pre-industrial era, while “anomalies,” temperatures that were most “noticeably above average, were recorded in Asia,” the center added. The warmest month ever measured on a global scale remains July 2023. The coldest was the one with which the Copernicus observatory began recording, January 1940. Sources: ΑΠΕ-ΜΑΕ, AFP