This story has been updated to include NASA’s failure this year to identify climate change as the cause of global warming.

With Earth’s average temperature last year hovering among one of the three hottest on record, a new data release from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) “makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump’s push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities,” Agence France-Presse reports.

Six science teams calculated that 2025 was behind 2024 and 2023, while two other groups—NASA and a joint American and British team—said 2025 was slightly warmer than 2023, The Associated Press writes. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), NASA, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said 2023 and 2025 temperatures were so close—.02°C (.04°F) apart — that it’s pretty much a tie.

But while NASA joined in the data release, it wasn’t terribly keen to tell the story, AFP says.

Last year, the science agency followed the science, proclaiming that “this global warming has been caused by human activities” and has led to intensifying “heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall, and coastal flooding.” The 2025 release “featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year’s release only runs through a few key facts and figures, and totals six paragraphs,” AFP writes.

“The press release and publicly available data provide the official agency analysis,” NASA told the news agency in response to a query about this year’s shift in tone.

AP reports that last year’s average global temperature was 15.08°C (59.14°F), which is 1.44°C warmer than pre-industrial times, the WMO calculated, averaging out the eight data sets. The temperature data used by most of the teams goes back to 1850.

All of the last three years flirted close to the internationally agreed-upon threshold of 1.5°C of warming since the mid 19th century. That goal for limiting temperature increases, established at the Paris climate summit in 2015, is likely to be breached by the end of this decade, the scientists said.

When charted on a graph, 2023, 2024 and 2025 “seemed to jump up,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Russ Vose. When averaged together, those three years shoot above the 1.5°C mark, according to the European climate service Copernicus.

Rising global temperatures intensify heat waves and other extreme weather, endangering people and causing billions of dollars in damage. The weather monitoring teams warn that the 2025 temperature increase is a dangerous sign of worsening storms, heat, floods, and fires.

Earth Warms at a Faster Rate

The last 11 years have been the hottest 11 on record, the climate monitoring groups found.

“The last three years are indicative of an acceleration in the warming. They’re not consistent with the linear trend that we’ve been observing for the 50 years before that,” said Robert Rohde, chief scientist at the Berkeley Earth monitoring group.

While Rohde said nearly all of the warming is from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, the past three years’ temperatures had a boost from a combination of less soot pollution from ships that normally has a cooling effect, peak atmospheric solar activity, and perhaps a 2022 underwater volcano eruption.

Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead of the Copernicus service, said the overwhelming culprit is clear: the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas.

“Climate change is happening. It’s here. It’s impacting everyone all around the world and it’s our fault,” Burgess told The Associated Press.

Three teams—including NOAA and NASA—reported their data Wednesday, while the others released their information late Tuesday. Copernicus and Japan use a combination of satellite data and computer simulations, while the rest of the groups use ground and sea observations. The eight data sets were within less than a tenth of a degree apart.

Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, who was not part of any of the teams, called what’s happening “another warning shot” of a shifting climate “where record/near-record global temperatures are the norm, not the exception.”

Higher Temperatures Endanger People

Burgess noted numerous heat waves in 2025 that broke local or national temperature records, also having significant effects on people’s bodies.

“When we look at a warmer world, we know that extreme events become more frequent and more intense,” Burgess said, mentioning 2025’s Los Angeles wildfires. “When we have severe storms or flooding events, the rain is more intense.”

Berkeley Earth calculated that 770 million people—one out of every 12 on the planet—experienced record annual heat, with 450 million of them in China. Other record hot spots included much of Australia, northern Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and Antarctica, according to Copernicus. The continental United States had its fourth-warmest year on record, NOAA found.

One major natural factor in global temperatures is the El Niño/La Niña oscillation, a cyclic warming or cooling of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather across much of the planet. Usually a warm El Niño spikes temperatures, while its cool La Niña flip side depresses temperatures.

Last year there were two weak, cool La Niñas so there was a “big part of the surface of the Earth that’s a little cooler than it otherwise would be, and that’s probably going to tuck a little temperature down just a little bit,” NOAA’s Vose said.

An Even Warmer Future Awaits

Some forecasts have an El Niño developing this year, but it’s still murky, meteorologists said. Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus’ climate service, said that when the next El Niño materializes, which he expects within the next couple of years, it will likely drive another record annual temperature.

Several of the climate monitoring groups are predicting that 2026 will be about as hot as 2025.

Looking ahead, both Copernicus and Berkeley Earth calculated that 2029 is the likely date that the planet’s long-term average will breach the 1.5°C threshold.

“In a decade’s time when we’re in the 2030s… the number of extreme events around the world will increase. The cost associated with the damages and impacts of those extreme events will be worse,” Burgess said. “And we will look back to the ‘mild’ climate of the mid-2020s with nostalgia.”