Europe is the continent that is warming the fastest – more than twice as fast as average – and the Arctic is the fastest warming region on Earth. This is evident today from the climate report for Europe (‘European State of the Climate’) for 2025 from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which implements the Copernicus Climate Service (C3S), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report brings together the work of about a hundred scientists.
Source: Belga
Globally, 2025 was the third warmest year since measurements began, only in 2024 and 2023. It was on average 1.47 degrees warmer last year than the pre-industrial level from 1850 to 1900. Depending on which dataset you look at, 2025 was the warmest (WMO RA VI), the second warmest (E-OBS) or the third warmest year (ERA5) ever measured in Europe.
Over the past thirty years, the world has warmed by 0.27 degrees Celsius every decade. Europe warmed 0.56 degrees every decade, the fastest of any continent and more than double the global average. This has to do with “changing weather patterns, reduced air pollution, reduced snow cover and the proximity to the Arctic,” Samantha Burgess of the ECMWF explained at a press conference. In the Arctic, it has become 0.75 degrees warmer every decade over the past thirty years: the Spitsbergen archipelago is one of the fastest warming places on Earth.
Heat wave in Scandinavia
By 2025, at least 95 percent of the European continent will experience temperatures that are higher than the average annual temperatures. The part of Norway, Sweden and Finland below the sixtieth parallel, not far from the Arctic Circle, suffered a three-week heat wave in July, the longest and most severe ever recorded there. During the same period, the mercury in that area climbed to and even beyond 30 degrees, with 34.9 degrees in Frosta, Norway as a sad highlight.
There were more than average days with strong heat stress, days when the perceived temperature was above 32 degrees. At the same time, there have never been so few so-called cold stress days: 90 percent of the continent experienced fewer than average days of severe cold stress, days when the perceived temperature drops below -13 degrees. Minimum temperatures remained above average for most of the year.
Record number of forest fires
The hot and dry weather fueled the record number of forest fires on the European continent. An area of about 10,340 square kilometers, larger than Cyprus, went up in smoke. Emissions from forest fires also reached a sad peak. Forest fires threaten biodiversity and habitats and can also fuel climate change. Forest fires in peatlands can release large amounts of carbon stored in the soil.
The higher than average temperatures and lower than average precipitation also led to less snow and ice. In March, the area covered in snow in Europe was about 1.32 million square kilometers smaller than average, an area the size of France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria combined. Since measurements began in 1983, the area in Europe covered by snow has only decreased twice.
The second largest mass loss of glaciers was measured in Iceland. The Greenland Ice Sheet lost 139 gigatons (139 billion tons) of ice. That loss is “the equivalent of a hundred Olympic swimming pools per hour,” Burgess said, and about one and a half times the volume of ice stored in all the glaciers of the European Alps.
Rising sea levels
The loss of ice in turn contributes to rising sea levels: every centimeter of rise exposes an additional 6 million people to coastal flooding. The oceans are suffering from global warming in another way: they absorbed about 90 percent of the excess heat from human-induced climate change last year. The highest annual sea surface temperature ever recorded was recorded in the European marine area, breaking the record for the fourth year in a row. Strong marine heat waves occurred widely, affecting 86 percent of Europe’s seas, a record, and they also intensified, from the Norwegian Sea to the Mediterranean. This trend also has an impact on biodiversity and habitats.
“More action is urgently needed”
The rivers are not doing well either. There were regional differences, but overall, about 70 percent of the rivers in Europe had a lower than average flow. In terms of soil moisture, 2025 was one of the three driest years since 1992 across Europe. Finally, storms and floods occurred less frequently than in previous years. But according to initial estimates, 14,500 people were still affected by severe weather and storms and floods killed at least 21 people on the European continent.
For Burgess it is clear. “The pace of climate change requires more urgent action,” she said. “With rising temperatures, widespread wildfires and drought, the evidence is unequivocal: climate change is not a future threat, but our current reality.”
