The average surface air temperature globally in May stood at 15.79C, 0.53C above the 1991-2020 average for the month, the European Union’s Copernicus said on Thursday.

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Last month, the second-warmest May ever recorded globally, brought exceptionally dry conditions to north-western Europe.

May’s global average surface air temperature of 15.79C was the second-highest ever recorded for the month, 0.12C cooler than the record May of 2024, and 0.06C warmer than the third warmest of 2020, according to data by the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme Copernicus.

The month was also 1.40C above the pre-industrial level – which the EU programme defines using the 1850-1900 average. It marked the first time since August 2024 that the global-average temperature exceeded 1.5C – a key target set by the international community to limit global warming.

Beyond 1.5C of global warming, experts warn that critical tipping points will be breached, leading to devastating and potentially irreversible consequences for several vital Earth systems that sustain a hospitable planet, such as rising sea levels, more intense heatwaves, stronger storms, and disruptions to ecosystems and biodiversity.

But Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change (C3S), cautioned against celebrating what he called a “brief respite for the planet,” warning that the 1.5C threshold will likely be exceeded again in the near future.

The planet has already warmed 1.3C since the Industrial Revolution, with the United Nations warning that the world is already on track for 3.1C of warming.

Last month’s global temperatures lowered the chances that 2025 will be the hottest year in history to 8%, though there is still a 50% chance that it will end up as the second-warmest year on record, according to research independent climatology research organization Berkley Earth.

Exceptionally Dry

Much of northern and central Europe were drier-than-average in May, with north-western parts of the continent seeing the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979, according to the monthly bulletin. Persistent dry conditions have led to the lowest spring river flow across the continent since record-keeping began in 1992.

The past three months were drier than average also over western North America and extra-tropical South America, the Horn of Africa, parts of central Asia, China, and south of Australia, Copernicus added.

A recent study commissioned by non-profit WaterAid that looked at the world’s top 100 most-populated cities and 12 other cities concluded that 44% of urban centers worldwide are getting drier. The Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona, France’s capital Paris and Germany’s capital Berlin were among the top-20 cities facing increasing dry extremes.

Featured image: Alisdare Hickson/Flickr.

It wasn’t always like this. Europe helped launch the global financing for development agenda in 2002 with the Monterrey Consensus, a bold agreement that promised action on unsustainable debt, increased development aid and fairer taxation.

Now, 23 years later, European governments are poised to abandon many of these commitments, despite an even bigger debt crisis raging in the global south.

Instead of backing an intergovernmental UN process toward a debt convention, which is supported among others by the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, the African Union and the European Parliament’s Development Committee, European governments are pushing for a watered-down “annual dialogue” involving mostly creditors and a select few borrowing countries. This will be little more than a talking shop that favors the undemocratic, creditor-dominated status quo. They must reverse this stance and back genuine reform.

This will be little more than a talking shop that favors the undemocratic, creditor-dominated status quo. They must reverse this stance and back genuine reform.

Aid is another urgent issue that has to be addressed. Most European governments have repeatedly stated their decades-old commitment to devote 0.7 percent of GNI to overseas development assistance. But the numbers tell a different story. Aid from rich countries dropped by 7.1 percent in 2024, with the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden all announcing cuts this year. The state of global aid is deteriorating rapidly, even though global crises demand more, not less, support.

The state of global aid is deteriorating rapidly, even though global crises demand more, not less, support.

Global south countries and civil society around the world have called for a UN-led process to build consensus on a shared understanding of official development assistance (ODA) parameters, and to develop a new framework that ensures equity, effectiveness and accountability. Yet European governments seem ready to support an OECD-led reflection process. This is not what is needed. The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, with its exclusive membership, won’t be able to deliver. A similar process set up more than a decade ago did not result in any improvements in the way aid is governed.

Meanwhile, the EU continues to promote its Global Gateway investment initiative, despite widespread concern that it prioritizes European business interests over genuine poverty reduction and sustainable development in partner countries.

The month of May 2025 was 1.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial average levels, according to the monthly update of the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency published today.

The good news is that this “breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5C above pre-industrial [times],” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. But the bad news is that “whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,” he added.

The scientific body also stated that northwestern Europe went through an “exceptionally dry spring.” It pointed out that parts of the region saw “the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979,” which led to the “lowest spring river flow across Europe since records began in 1992.”

The increase in global temperatures is mainly the result of the continuous burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. But under the Paris climate agreement adopted in 2015, countries committed to try to limit global warming to below 2C and ideally under 1.5C compared with preindustrial levels.

The EU itself also agreed to slash its greenhouse gas emissions under the Green Deal and reach climate neutrality by mid-century.

This May was the world’s second warmest ever recorded, exceeded only by May 2024, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), bringing unusually dry conditions to northwestern Europe.

Data shows that the global average surface air temperature was 15.79ºC last month, 0.53ºC higher than the 1991 to 2020 average.

May was an estimated 1.4ºC above the average for 1850 to 1900 – the period used to define the pre-industrial average. It interrupts a sweltering stretch where 21 out of 22 months breached this 1.5ºC threshold, though EU scientists say this is unlikely to last.

“May 2025 breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5ºC above pre-industrial,” says Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S at ECMWF.

Whether or not the world breaches the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 1.5ºC is measured over decades, not single months, meaning it has not technically been passed.

“Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5ºC threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,” Buontempo adds.

Dry spring brings drought concerns in Europe

High temperatures have been paired with dry weather across much of the world over the last few months.

In Europe, May brought drier than average conditions to much of northern and central Europe as well as southern regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Türkiye.

This spring has been a contrast between drier-than-average conditions in the north and west and wetter-than-average conditions across the south and northwestern Russia.

Parts of northwestern Europe saw their lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979. And persistent dry conditions have led to the lowest spring river flow across Europe since records began in 1992.

More than half of the land in Europe and the Mediterranean basin faced some form of drought from 11 to 20 May, according to data from the European Drought Observatory. That is the highest level recorded for that period of time in the year since monitoring began in 2012.

Traffic crosses a bridge at Woodhead Reservoir in Derbyshire as England experiences a significant drought. (Traffic crosses a bridge at Woodhead Reservoir in Derbyshire as England experiences a significant drought.)

Farmers across northern Europe have voiced fears for their crops, with unusually dry weather delaying the sprouting of wheat and corn. In the UK, the National Farmers’ Union warned in early May that some crops were already failing due to the country’s driest spring in well over a century.

In late May, the European Central Bank warned that water scarcity puts nearly 15 per cent of the euro area’s economic output at risk. New research conducted with experts at the University of Oxford found that water was the single biggest nature-related risk to the euro area economy.

This year, the world experienced its second-warmest month of May since records began, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has said in a monthly bulletin.

Global surface temperatures last month averaged 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, C3S said.

The latest data comes amid mixed momentum on climate action globally, with China and the EU reducing emissions as the Trump administration and technology companies increase their use of fossil fuels.

“Temperatures were most above average over western Antarctica, a large area of the Middle East and western Asia, northeastern Russia, and northern Canada,” the C3S bulletin added.

At 1.4C above pre-industrial levels, May was also the first month globally not to go over 1.5C (2.7F) in warming in 22 months.

“May 2025 breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5C above pre-industrial,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S.

“Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,” Buontempo said.

The city of Lyon was covered in heavy smoke from intense wildfires in Canada, which reached France on Tuesday, according to Meteo France [Jeff Pachoud/AFP]

The increased temperatures were particularly felt in Pakistan’s Jacobabad city in Sindh province, where residents grappled with extreme temperatures in the high 40s, which sometimes reached 50C (122 F).

The soaring temperatures followed another heatwave last June that killed more than 560 people in southern Pakistan.

“While a heatwave that is around 20C might not sound like an extreme event from the experience of most people around the world, it is a really big deal for this part of the world,” Friederike Otto, associate professor in climate science at Imperial College London, told reporters.

“It affects the whole world massively,” Otto added. “Without climate change, this would have been impossible.”

In a separate report released on Wednesday, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research collaboration said Greenland’s ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the past average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland.

Mixed momentum on climate action

The latest data comes amid mixed progress on climate change action.

United States President Donald Trump has promised to “drill, baby, drill” during his presidency, even as his country faces increasingly severe weather events, like the fires that tore through California’s capital, Los Angeles, late last year. Emissions from technology companies are also surging, as expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres drives up global electricity demand, according to a recent report from the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

New analysis by the climate reporting site Carbon Brief found that China’s emissions may have peaked, as the country increased electricity supplies from new wind, solar, and nuclear capacity and reduced its reliance on coal and other fossil fuels.

“China’s emissions were down 1.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1 percent in the latest 12 months,” Carbon Brief reported last month.

“If this pattern is sustained, then it would herald a peak and sustained decline in China’s power-sector emissions,” it added.

The EU also announced last week that its 27 member states are well on track to meet their goal of a 55 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

“Emissions are down 37 percent since 1990, while the economy has grown nearly 70 percent — proving climate action and growth go hand in hand,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s commissioner for climate, net zero and clean growth.

In the Caribbean, leaders met recently to plan ways to restore the region’s mangrove forests, which help prevent climate change and protect from rising sea levels and intensifying storms.