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'A Wake-Up Call': Scientists Find 2025 Among Hottest Years on Record
"2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
Dec 30, 2025
Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.
Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that "although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record," with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.
For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.
"Global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real," the report continues. "It is not a future threat, but a present-day reality."
"Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops," the researchers wrote. "Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world."
The WWA researchers' findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.
According to the WWA study:
This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.
The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of 1.5°C, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto—who is also an Imperial College London climate scientist—told the Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”
The WWA study's publication comes a month after this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.
Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that "2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
"Today’s report is a wake-up call," Alt continued. "Unfortunately, [US President Donald] Trump and Republicans controlling Congress spent the past year making climate denial official US policy and undermining progress to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. Their reckless polluters-first agenda rolled back critical climate protections and attacked and undermined the very agencies responsible for helping Americans prepare for and recover from increasingly dangerous disasters."
"Across the country, people are standing up and demanding their leaders do better to protect our families from climate change and extreme weather," Alt added. "It's time those in power started listening.”
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In 'Latest Pro-Polluter Move,' Trump EPA to End Emissions Data Collection
"EPA cannot avoid the climate crisis by simply burying its head in the sand as it baselessly cuts off its main source of greenhouse gas emissions data," said one Sierra Club campaigner.
Sep 12, 2025
Citing US President Donald Trump's anti-climate executive actions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday unveiled a proposal to end a program that requires power plants, refineries, landfills, and more to report their emissions.
While Zeldin claimed that "the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality," experts and climate advocates emphasized the importance of the data collection, which began in 2010.
"President Trump promised Americans would have the cleanest air on Earth, but once again, Trump's EPA is taking actions that move us further from that goal," Joseph Goffman, who led the EPA Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration, said in a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, a group for former agency staff.
"Cutting the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program blinds Americans to the facts about climate pollution. Without it, policymakers, businesses, and communities cannot make sound decisions about how to cut emissions and protect public health," he explained.
As The New York Times reported:
For the past 15 years, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has collected data from about 8,000 of the country's largest industrial facilities. That information has helped guide numerous decisions on federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required developed countries to submit tallies of their emissions.
In addition, private companies often rely on the program's data to demonstrate to investors that their efforts to cut emissions are working. And communities often use it to determine whether local facilities are releasing air pollution that threatens public health.
"By hiding this information from the public, Administrator Zeldin is denying Americans the ability to see the damaging results of his actions on climate pollution, air quality, and public health," Goffman said. "It's a further addition to the deliberate blockade against future action on climate change—and yet another example of the administration putting polluters before people's health."
Sierra Club's director of climate policy and advocacy, Patrick Drupp, stressed Friday that "EPA cannot avoid the climate crisis by simply burying its head in the sand as it baselessly cuts off its main source of greenhouse gas emissions data."
"The agency has provided no defensible reason to cancel the program; this is nothing more than EPA's latest action to deny the reality of climate change and do everything it can to put the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters before people," he added. "The Sierra Club will oppose this proposal every step of the way.”
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, similarly said that "the Trump administration's latest pro-polluter move to eliminate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is just another brazen step in their Polluters First agenda."
Responding to the administration's claim that the proposal would save businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs, Alt said that "under the guise of saving Americans money, this is an attempt on the part of Trump, Lee Zeldin, and their polluter buddies to hide the ball and avoid responsibility for the deadly, dangerous, and expensive pollution they produce."
"If they succeed, the nation's biggest polluters will spew climate-wrecking pollution without accountability," she warned. "The idea that tracking pollution does 'nothing to improve air quality' is absurd," she added. "If you don't measure it, you can't manage it. Hiding information and allowing fossil fuel companies to avoid accountability are the true goals of this rule."
The Trump admin is now proposing to kill the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which since 2010 has required 8,000+ coal plants, refineries, and factories to report their climate pollution.Without it, polluters get a free pass.No reporting = no accountability.
— Climate Action Now (@climateactapp.bsky.social) September 12, 2025 at 7:04 PM
BlueGreen Alliance executive director Jason Walsh declared that "the Trump administration continues to prove it does not care about the American people and their basic right to breathe clean air. This flies in the face of the EPA's core mission—to protect the environment and public health."
"The proposal is wildly unpopular with even industry groups speaking against it because they know the value of having this emissions data available," he noted. "Everybody in this country deserves to know the air quality in their community and how their lives can be affected when they live near high-emitting facilities."
“Knowledge is power and—in this case—health," he concluded. "The administration shouldn't be keeping people in the dark about the air they and their neighbors are breathing."
This proposal from Zeldin came a day after the EPA moved to reverse rules protecting people from unsafe levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "forever chemicals," in US drinking water, provoking similar criticism. Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien said that his PFAS decision "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
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'Sigh of Relief' as Supreme Court Gives EPA Another Temporary Win
"Fossil fuel interests lost, and clean air won," one group declared.
Oct 16, 2024
The climate movement on Wednesday welcomed a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, the third temporary win for the Biden administration's environmental policies this month.
Although the right-wing justices have a record of rulings that have alarmed environmental and public health groups, the high court declined to block an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule intended to limit power plants' planet-heating pollution as a legal challenge to the April policy plays out.
"Given its rulings in recent years undercutting environmental protections, the refusal of the majority on the Supreme Court to block this vital rule is a victory for common sense. This warrants a sigh of relief from the millions of Americans experiencing the impact of the climate crisis," said Meredith Hankins, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Today's ruling rejects the latest abuse of the Supreme Court's shadow docket by industry and some state attorneys general. The high court made the right call," she continued. "The Supreme Court evidently saw through their phony arguments."
"Power producers don't need immediate relief from modest standards that kick in eight years from now. And states have plenty of time to begin their planning process," Hankins stressed. "Now the case goes back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is moving quickly to decide the merits of this case. We will be helping to defend the standards there. The climate crisis demands that we do."
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, similarly said that "the climate crisis is actually an emergency affecting tens of millions of people across the globe every day. Today the court rejected the big polluters' attempt to seek an emergency stay based on their trumped-up allegations. We are in the middle of what will be the hottest year on record, with devastating and deadly extreme storms occurring regularly."
"The EPA's carbon pollution standards for power plants set reasonable targets for utilities and states to cut their carbon pollution, allowing years for them to meet those goals. The Supreme Court's decision rejected the big polluter arguments against slashing carbon pollution and paved the way for less climate pollution in the future," Alt added. "Of course, the fight isn't over. The D.C. Circuit must still rule on the merits. We support the EPA's authority to set commonsense pollution protections to slash climate pollution and protect our kids and communities from climate change and other dangerous air pollution."
The decision came after the justices in early October rejected industry-backed petitions to issue injunctions on new Biden administration rules for methane and mercury. However, conservative Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in Wednesday's decision due to financial conflicts and Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have granted the emergency request from GOP-led states and groups to block the rule.
Additionally, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, said the states and groups "have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges," but there is no need for emergency action at this time "because the applicants need not start compliance work until June 2025," so "they are unlikely to suffer irreparable harm" before a final decision.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday:
The dispute was the latest bid by Republican-led states to undercut the Biden administration's ambitious climate agenda. The challenge carries similarities to a case the Supreme Court considered in the term that ended in July. Three states, Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia, joined with industry groups to challenge an EPA proposal aimed at limiting the flow of air pollution across state lines, asking the Supreme Court to intervene even as the challenge continued to be litigated in lower courts.
In June, the justices paused the proposal, known as the "good neighbor" plan, which requires factories and power plants in the West and Midwest to cut ozone pollution that makes its way into Eastern states.
Although green groups are pushing to preserve the April policy, some have argued that the Biden administration should have gone further with its actions to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
Climate Justice Alliance interim executive director KD Chavez said Wednesday that while the group applauds the path the latest Supreme Court decision "charts for what can be construed as a coal phaseout, this rule is still riddled with loopholes that give a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry to continue operations and experiment on frontline communities by exposing them to the dangers and health effects of unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage."
"The rule does not go far enough to push the needle towards a fossil fuel phaseout and a just transition for the energy sector, the communities where energy projects are sited, and the workers who could tap into renewable energy jobs," Chavez emphasized. "Frontline communities deserve more, and given this rule won't be applied until next year, we will continue to work to ensure stronger power plant regulations that meet the growing threat of climate catastrophe we all currently face."
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