NASA reports record heat but omits reference to climate change

By Issam AHMED
Washington, United States (AFP) Jan 14, 2026
Don't say the c-word.

Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump's push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.

That marks a sharp break from last year's communications, issued under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: "This global warming has been caused by human activities" and has led to intensifying "heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall and coastal flooding."

Last year's materials also featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year's release only runs through a few key facts and figures, and totals six paragraphs.

"The press release and publicly available data provide the official agency analysis," the US space agency said in response to a request for comment about the shift in tone.

According to NASA, Earth's global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than in 2023 -- albeit within a margin of error -- making it effectively tied as the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

Other global agencies, including the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which use different methodologies and modeling, say 2025 ranked as the third-hottest.

"The US government is now, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, a petrostate under Trump and Republican rule, and the actions of all of its agencies and departments can be understood in terms of the agenda of the polluters that are running the show," University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann told AFP.

"It is therefore entirely unsurprising that NASA administrators are attempting to bury findings of its own agency that conflict with its climate denial agenda."

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, added: "I'm just happy they were allowed to put out a press release."

"Pretty much all federal scientists working on climate in the US have had to self-censor and leave out reference to human influences on climate change, unfortunately," he told AFP. "Thankfully much of the underlying science is still occurring, even if they cannot talk about it."

NASA's analysis found that average temperatures for 2025 were 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (1.19 degrees Celsius) above the 1951-1980 average.

It was based on data from more than 25,000 meteorological stations worldwide, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research stations, with the data analyzed and corrected for changing distributions of temperature stations and urban heating effects that could skew the results.

2025 was third hottest year on record: climate monitors
Brussels, Belgium (AFP) Jan 14, 2026 - The planet logged its third hottest year on record in 2025, extending a run of unprecedented heat, with no relief expected in 2026, global climate monitors said Wednesday.

The last 11 years have now been the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 topping the podium and 2023 in second place, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organisation.

For the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times on average over the last three years, Copernicus said in its annual report.

"The warming spike observed from 2023-2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth's warming," Berkeley Earth said in a separate report.

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement commits the world to limiting warming to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to hold it at 1.5C -- a long-term target scientists say would help avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned in October that breaching 1.5C was "inevitable" but the world could limit this period of overshoot by cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

Copernicus said the 1.5C limit "could be reached by the end of this decade -- over a decade earlier than predicted".

But efforts to contain global warming were dealt another setback last week as President Donald Trump said he would pull the United States -- the world's second-biggest polluter after China -- out of the bedrock UN climate treaty.

Temperatures were 1.47C above pre-industrial times in 2025 -- just a fraction cooler than in 2023 -- following 1.6C in 2024, according to Copernicus.

The World Meteorological Organization, the UN's weather and climate agency, said two of eight datasets it analysed showed 2025 was the second warmest year, but the other six datasets ranked it third.

The WMO put the 2023-2025 average at 1.48C but with a margin of uncertainty of plus-minus 0.13C.

Despite the cooling La Nina weather phenomenon, 2025 "was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere", WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement.

Some 770 million people experienced record-warm annual conditions where they live, while no record-cold annual average was logged anywhere, according to Berkeley Earth.

The Antarctic experienced its warmest year on record while it was the second hottest in the Arctic, Copernicus said.

An AFP analysis of Copernicus data last month found that Central Asia, the Sahel region and northern Europe experienced their hottest year on record in 2025.

- 2026: Fourth-warmest? -

Berkeley and Copernicus both warned that 2026 would not break the trend.

If the warming El Nino weather phenomenon appears this year, "this could make 2026 another record-breaking year", Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP.

"Temperatures are going up. So we are bound to see new records. Whether it will be 2026, 2027, 2028 doesn't matter too much. The direction of travel is very, very clear," Buontempo said.

Berkeley Earth said it expected this year to be similar to 2025, "with the most likely outcome being approximately the fourth-warmest year since 1850".

- Emissions fight -

The reports come as efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions -- the main driver of climate change -- are stalling in developed countries.

Emissions rose in the United States last year, snapping a two-year streak of declines, as bitter winters and the AI boom fuelled demand for energy, the Rhodium Group think tank said Tuesday.

The pace of reductions of greenhouse gas emissions slowed in Germany and France.

"While greenhouse gas emissions remain the dominant driver of global warming, the magnitude of this recent spike suggests additional factors have amplified recent warming beyond what we would expect from greenhouse gases and natural variability alone," said Berkeley Earth chief scientist Robert Rohde.

The organisation said international rules cutting sulphur in ship fuel since 2020 may have actually added to warming by reducing sulphur dioxide emissions, which form aerosols that reflect sunlight away from Earth.