The third-hottest month ever seen on Earth in July 2025 highlights the ever-intensifying race of climate change, despite the world dealing with a temporary hiatus in the streak of monthly temperature records that controlled much of the last two years. This record, combined with the highest national record ever with 50.5C in Turkey, shows that warming may have reached its peak in the short term but that the long-term rise in global heating towards more severe warming remains on course, threatening the stability of life on Earth, human health, and the economy, as scientists warn that weather extremes will increasingly increase unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced soon and dramatically.
Global Temperature Records and Trends
Last month was Earth’s third warmest July since records began and included a record national temperature in Turkey of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 Fahrenheit), scientists said on Thursday.
Last month continued a trend of extreme climate conditions that scientists attribute to man-made global warming, even though there was a pause in record-breaking temperatures for the planet.
According to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the average global surface air temperature reached 16.68 C in July, which is 0.45 C above the 1991-2020 average for the month.
“Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over – for now,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S.
Climate Change Implications
The momentary pause on back-to-back months of record hot temperatures cannot be understood as a climatic respite, since warming trend on which it is based is very much still alive and is only serving to intensify more severe weather incidents on the planet. To further sprout credible scientific evidence, scientists shed light that the twelve-month period in Aug 2024 to Jul 2025 was above the pre-industrial global average of 1.53°C, which is more than the agreed target under the Paris Agreement seeking to suppress the extremities of the climatic phenomenon as 1.5°C. The continued overrunning and exceeding of the agreed international warming level is an indicator that the world is already in the initial parts of the dangerous climate change period as more and more instances of heatwaves, droughts, floods, and extreme weather are becoming normal instead of extraordinary events.
Turkey’s Record-Breaking Heat
The hottest historic temperature experience in Turkey of 50.5°C is not just a national record but it is rather a representative of the increasing heat extremes that are gaining prominence in the Mediterranean region as well as other regions of vulnerability in the world. Such searing heat, observed during massive wildfires that ripped through the nation, demonstrates how extreme heat can lead into devastating environmental crises, wherein high temperatures cause circumstances that lead to more fierce wildfires, which gives off greater amounts of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. The record-breaking heat and the fires all over Turkey is a dire warning of the compounded climate risk that many parts of the world will experience as temperatures become hottest ever and render parts of the world inhabitable during the ardent summer months and mass population migrations will take place in the future decades.
The third-place success of July in terms of world temperatures underlines all the climate change remains devastating, and the Turkish record temperature of 50.5 degrees Celsius should remind anyone that hot weather is only getting hotter. Even the slight hiatus in record-setting temperatures is not a relief since the global orbits continue to be in a threatening warming trend that requires urgent measures. To avoid even greater disastrous swings in temperature extremes in the years to come not only is the world in dire need of converting to renewable forms of energy but drastic carbon cutting strategies as well.
GCN.com/Reuters.