2025 is fourth warmest on record in US, third hottest globally

A flurry of crunching weather observations from around the globe confirmed that 2025 was another one of the warmest years in modern record, with staggering heat for millions, including residents of Utah and Nevada.

Leading weather and climate organizations announced on Jan. 13 and 14 that 2025 was the fourth warmest year on record in the United States and the third warmest year worldwide since records began in 1850.

The higher than normal temperatures extend an “unprecedented run of global heat,” said Berkeley Earth, a California-based independent nonprofit dedicated to advancing “open, transparent climate science.” Even though it's only January, Berkeley Earth's scientists expect a similarly warm year for 2026, although it's not likely to exceed the warmth of the last three years.

Globally, the 2025 annual average temperature was 58.59 degrees, roughly 2.6 degrees above the average between 1850 and 1900. The year was just slightly cooler than 2024, the hottest year on record, and just barely cooler than 2023, which held onto its spot as the second warmest.

Across the contiguous United States, the temperature averaged 54.6 degrees, 2.6 degrees above the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Utah and Nevada saw their warmest years on record in 2025, with annual average temperatures 4.3 degrees and 3.7 degrees above their 20th-century averages, respectively. Utah broke a record set in 1934, NOAA said. In Nevada, December 2025 was the warmest on record in Las Vegas and Reno.

Such warmer-than-normal temperatures throughout the West helped make 2025 the warmest year on record for the western one-third of the nation, NOAA said.

In total, a dozen states experienced one of their four warmest years, NOAA reported. At the county level, 62 counties across 10 states ‒ inhabited by more than eight million people ‒ recorded their warmest year on record.

Worldwide warming

The 11 years since January 2015 are the warmest in the instrumental data record, Berkeley Earth reported, using data that combines 23 million monthly average measurements from 57,685 weather stations, dating back to 1750, as well as 500 million ocean temperature observations from ships and buoys.

Compared to the warming trend over the past 50 years, the spike since 2023 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth’s warming, Berkeley's scientists said.“The warming observed from 2023 through 2025 stands out clearly from the long-term trend,” said Robert Rohde, Berkeley Earth’s chief scientist.

The spike "underscores how quickly the climate system can change, and how essential sustained monitoring is to understanding those changes in real time,” said Kristen Sissener, executive director of Berkeley Earth. “Continued investment in high-quality, resilient, and robust open climate data is critical to ensuring that governments, industry, and local communities can respond based on evidence, not assumptions.”

2025 US weather facts

The other weather events NOAA tallied in its 2025 list this week included:

• 1,559 tornadoes – the fifth-highest number on record, including a record 300 in March, according to preliminary data.
• A record of 72 tornadoes in North Dakota, breaking a state record of 61, set in 2010.
• The Enderlin, North Dakota, tornado was the first EF-5 verified since 2013.
• The large fires in Eaton and Palisades, California were the second- and third-most destructive in California history.

Average world temperature exceeded goal

With another near-record warm year in the books, the global average temperature for the three years since 2023 exceeded 2.7 degrees above the pre-industrial levels from 1850 to 1900, according to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates the Copernicus Climate Change Service. That's the first time a three-year span of temperatures has broken records, the European center said.

World leaders who agreed to the Paris climate accord in 2015 hoped to keep warming to 2.7 degrees above the long-term average from the late 1800s by curbing the greenhouse gas emissions considered a leading cause of warming. Based on the current rate of warming, that limit could be reached by the end of this decade, more than a decade earlier than predicted when the agreement was reached.

"The world is rapidly approaching the long-term temperature limit set by the Paris agreement," said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "We are bound to pass it; the choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”

The administration of President Donald Trump continues to assert that climate scientists are being overly alarmist, including in a speech the president gave to the United Nations. Earlier in January, Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, becoming the first country to do so.

Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, weather, the environment and other news. Reach her at [email protected] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.