Several regions have experienced their warmest temperatures on record this year, with Central Asia, the Sahel region and northern Europe seeing average temperatures not seen before, according to data from the EU's Copernicus climate service, which was analysed by AFP.
Globally, the past twelve months look set to be the third warmest on record, after the two immediately preceding years, 2024 and 2023.
In Europe, the summer was exceptionally hot. In the Balkans, temperatures reached as much as three degrees above normal in some places.
Northern Europe largely escaped the summer heatwave, but experienced a very warm autumn. Overall, 2025 is one of the two warmest years since records began for Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.
Records were also broken in several places in Africa, with Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Burkina Faso experiencing temperatures above average.
And in Central Asia, every country exceeded its annual average temperature in 2025.
Scientists from World Weather Attribution, which evaluates human impact on the climate, write in a report that extreme heat waves have become almost ten times more common since 2015.
The assessment, which is still preliminary, will be determined by the EU's climate service Copernicus in January.
