Drought fears in Europe amid reports May was world's second hottest ever
Countries across Europe, including the UK, have been hit by drought conditions in recent months, with water shortages feared unless significant rain comes this summer, and crop failures beginning to be reported by farmers.
The new Copernicus data shows that May 2025 was the second-warmest May globally, with an average surface air temperature of 15.79C, 0.53C above the 1991-2020 average for May. The month was 1.4C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level. This interrupts a period of 21 months out of 22 where the global average temperature was more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial level.
Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), said: 'May 2025 breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5C above pre-industrial. 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.'
The 1.5 degrees is the climate target agreed by the 2015 Paris agreement. The target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been missed, but does show the climate emergency continues to intensify. Every year in the past decade has been one of the 10 hottest, in records that go back to 1850.
Dry weather has persisted in many parts of the world. In May 2025, much of northern and central Europe as well as southern regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Türkiye were drier than average. Parts of north-western Europe experienced the lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979.
In May 2025, it was drier than average in much of north America, in the Horn of Africa and across central Asia, as well as in southern Australia, and much of both southern Africa and South America.
May also saw abnormally high sea surface temperatures in the north-eastern Atlantic, reaching the highest ever recorded, according to Copernicus.
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