June 2025 has been recorded as the hottest month ever documented in Western Europe, as “extreme” temperatures hit the continent during two consecutive heat waves, announced the European service Copernicus. On a global scale, the month was the third hottest in history, following June 2024, which was 0.2° Celsius warmer, and almost at the same level as June 2023 (-0.06° Celsius), marking the third consecutive year of historically high average temperatures, a result of continued global warming due to climate change.
Read: France: Historic high for sea surface temperature due to heatwave intensity
Copernicus: June 2025 was the hottest month ever recorded in Western Europe’s history
According to calculations by the French Agency based on Copernicus service data, 12 countries and approximately 790 million inhabitants of the planet experienced the hottest June they have ever known. This applies to Japan, North and South Korea, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Temperatures were also particularly “extreme” in Europe, which is warming twice as fast as the global average. Specifically, two heat waves were recorded in June, from the 17th to the 22nd, then from June 30th, which are characterized as “exceptional,” emphasized climatologist Samantha Burgess from Copernicus, according to the service announcement.
Due to climate change and global warming, “heat waves are likely to become more frequent, more intense and affect more people across Europe,” she added. Locally, temperatures often exceeded 40° Celsius in various countries and reached up to 46° Celsius in Spain and Portugal. On June 30th, a new daily record was set: it was one of “the hottest days ever recorded” on the Old Continent.
Extreme thermal stress reaching 48° Celsius in northern Lisbon
However, these averages are nothing compared to the so-called “feels like” temperature, which measures the impact on the human body, taking into account humidity levels and winds. In northern Lisbon, the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) reached up to 48° Celsius, meaning a level of “extreme thermal stress,” the Copernicus service emphasized.
Tropical nights, during which the temperature does not drop below 20° Celsius, put human organisms under severe stress. In Spain, 24 were recorded, in other words 18 more compared to any normal June. In some Mediterranean regions, there were 10 to 15, versus usually zero in any June, it noted.
Catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis
Devastating wildfires in parts of Canada and southern Europe, deadly floods in regions of southern Africa, China and Pakistan: the consequences of climate change were dramatic worldwide last month. Specifically, June however provided little respite after two years that broke consecutive records, 2023 and 2024. It was on average 1.3° Celsius warmer than any June of the pre-industrial era (1850-1900), and “only the third time in the last 24 years that the planet’s temperature remained below 1.5° Celsius above the pre-industrial level,” according to the service.
2025 is expected to be the third hottest year in history
Indeed, with the data so far, 2025 is set to be the third hottest year globally. On a global scale “the climate is about 1.35 to 1.4° Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era,” Burgess told the French Agency at the end of June, as the observatory predicts that the 1.5° Celsius barrier will be broken, at the current rate, by 2029. June 2025 also witnessed a marine heatwave in the western Mediterranean, with surface temperature rising sharply at the beginning of the month and reaching an absolute record level of 27° Celsius on June 30th.
Record temperatures in Mediterranean waters “reduce nighttime air temperature drop along coasts and increase humidity, thus worsening (…) thermal stress,” according to the Copernicus observatory. They also have devastating effects on marine biodiversity and serious impact on fishing and aquaculture.
