World has third-hottest July on record

The world experienced its third- hottest July on record in 2025, following two years of record temperatures for the month, although several regions were devastated by extreme weather, the European climate monitoring service reported on Thursday 7.

Heavy rains caused flooding in Pakistan and northern China, while Canada, Scotland and Greece faced wildfires and several countries in Asia and Scandinavia recorded record temperatures in July.

“Two years after the hottest July on record, a streak of global record temperatures has been broken,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.

"But that doesn't mean climate change is over. We continue to witness the effects of a warming world," he added.

July saw a slight drop compared to the same month in the previous two years, averaging 1.25°C above the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).

In July, floods devastated parts of Pakistan and China.Photo: by Arif ALI / AFP

However, the seemingly small increase was enough to make storms, heat waves and other weather events more deadly and destructive.

“In July, we witnessed the effects of a warming world in events such as extreme heat waves and catastrophic floods,” Buontempo said.

Last month, temperatures exceeded 50°C in the Gulf, Iraq and, for the first time, Turkey, while torrential rains killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan.

In Spain, more than a thousand deaths were attributed to the July heat, half of the same period in 2024, according to a public body.

The main source of CO2 that causes the temperature to rise is the burning of oil, coal and gas to generate electricity.

“Unless we quickly stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records, but also worsening impacts,” Buontempo warned.

More than half of Europe and the Mediterranean region recorded their worst drought conditions in the first half of July since monitoring began in 2012, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Drought Observatory.

In contrast, temperatures were below normal in North and South America, India and parts of Australia and Africa, as well as Antarctica.