2025 Palisades Fire – Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0
2025 – A Reality Check
This is the first of a two part article looking ahead to what increasingly looks inevitable – a much hotter world. Part 1 takes a “reality check” look at 2025 and where the global climate will go from here. Part 2 looks at recent speculation that the climate could well be 3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels later this century, and how climate adaptation must become a priority.
As the saying goes, you have to begin where you are, so let’s start with 2025. With the year just underway, the World Meteorological Organization set the stage with its 2024 State of the Global Climate report: Key points will be familiar to regular Climate Adaptation Center readers:
- Key climate change indicators again reach record levels
- Long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains just below 1.5°C (the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement)
- Sea-level rise and ocean warming are ongoing and irreversible for hundreds of years
- Record greenhouse gas concentrations combined with El Niño and other factors to drive 2024 record heat
The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) report that the 2024 average temperature across the contiguous United States was 55.5°F (13°C). This is 3.5°F (1.9 °C) above the 20th-century average, making it the warmest year on record since measurements began in 1895. Twenty-seven separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events occurred in the U.S. during 2024—the second-highest annual disaster count in the 45-year record.
As we entered 2025…
The year got off to a horrific start with the catastrophic wildfires surrounding Los Angeles, boosted by a phenomenon called hydroclimate whiplash—rapid swings between intensely wet and intensely dry weather. The wet period leads to rapid and abundant growth of shrubs and grasses, which become tinder-dry in subsequent hot, dry weather. Hydroclimate whiplash set the stage for the Los Angeles fires: multiple atmospheric rivers in the winter of 2022-2023 dumped rain and heavy snowfall, only to be followed by the record hot, dry summer of 2024. Wildfires were virtually inevitable at that point and strong Santa Ana winds drove the fires to spread rapidly.
As the global climate warms, a recent study by UCLA’s Daniel Swain and colleagues shows that hydroclimate whiplash has increased by 31% to 66% since the mid-twentieth century. Climate change is powering the increase, such that it will more than double should global temperatures rise to 3°C above pre-industrial levels. (Hold that thought for Part 2…)
The rest of the U.S. followed the California fires with swarms of deadly storms that delivered tornadoes and intense rainfall to the central U.S.
January to May 3, 2025 severe weather report summary National Weather Service/Storm Prediction Center
In the U.S., Between January 1 and April 7, 2025, there were 461 reported tornadoes in the U.S., including 59 that were EF-2 (windspeeds between 111 and 135 mph) or higher. Tornado warnings were issued as far north as Toronto, Canada. Catastrophic flooding was reported along the Ohio River valley, which reached its highest level in 30 years in Cincinnati. Rainfall flooded roads and prompted evacuations.
Meteorologist Pat Hyland reports that over just seven days, from April 2-9 2025, the National Weather Service issued 1,046 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, 485 Tornado warnings, and 313 Flash Flood warnings. The third-most Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings ever issued through April 9.
Meanwhile, a fast-moving forest fire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens caused thousands of evacuations. Wisconsin is experiencing a record start to its fire season, with 470 fires reported by mid-April – twice the average for that time of year. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources lays the blame on steadily shrinking snowpacks—the result of climate warming.
Beyond the U.S., the impacts of climate warming are increasingly evident. In mid-April, for example, a severe heatwave hit India and Pakistan. New Delhi reported multiple incidences of temperatures exceeding 40°C (104°F), as much as 5°C above the seasonal average. Parts of Pakistan experienced temperatures up to 49°C (120°F). Temperatures in the region are likely to remain well above average until the monsoon season begins in June. Subsequent analysis of the heatwave data suggests that meteorological events similar to the April 2025 heatwave are up to 4°C warmer in the present than in the past. The analysts conclude that the April heatwave was driven by “very exceptional meteorological conditions whose characteristics can mostly be ascribed to human driven climate change.”
Looking Ahead in 2025…
Without a doubt, severe weather events are the hallmark of 2025 to date and they may remain so. To look ahead, we need to take a broader approach, to try to extract the signal from the noise.
The following figure by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows that the record heat of 2024 is continuing into 2025. Indeed, the UK experienced the hottest May 1st ever recorded.
Both Berkeley Earth and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) contributed to the following summary of the earth’s climate for March 2025:
- March 2025 tied for the warmest March on record, with global average temperatures of 1.55 ± 0.15 °C (2.32 ± 0.22 °F) above the 1850-1900 average.
- March was the 20th month in the last 21 months for which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
- Temperatures were slightly warmer than March 2024 and March 2016 (the two hottest years).
- The average sea surface temperature for March 2025 over 60°S–60°N (the ice-free latitudes) was 20.96°C, the second-highest value on record for the month, just 0.12°C below the March 2024 record
- March 2025 marked the lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the 47-year satellite record
Berkeley Earth estimates that, as of March, 2025 has a 34% chance to be the warmest year on record and a 46% chance to be the second warmest year.
Not surprisingly, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center most recent seasonal outlook shows hot weather ahead for most of the U.S.
Hurricane Season Is Coming
June will mark the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. As an inevitable consequence of a warming climate—both in the atmosphere and in the oceans—tropical cyclone intensity has increased around the world over approximately the past 40 years. In the Atlantic Basin, the National Hurricane Center suggests that the overall frequency of intense hurricanes, specifically major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher), has increased in recent decades. Recent NOAA research shows that, while the overall number of hurricanes in a season may not change drastically over the long term, the likelihood of extremely active seasons is increasing.
On April 1st, the Climate Adaptation Center (CAC) released our 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast. We predict another active year, with only a slight decrease in the number of Named Storms (17) and Hurricanes (10) compared to a very active 2024—and the same number of Major Hurricanes (5).
Looking Ahead
In Part 2 of this article, we will explore projected climate change through 2100, and the consequences of what is shaping up to be a much hotter world.