BRUSSELS — Last month was the world’s second-warmest April on record, European scientists found.
This past April was 1.51 degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial average, continuing the now nearly two-year-old trend of months breaching the symbolic barrier, the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency said in its latest monthly bulletin published Thursday.
Twenty-one out of the past 22 months crossed the 1.5C threshold. Temperatures for the 12-month period between May 2024 and April 2025 registered 1.58C above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus. The steady rise in global temperatures is primarily driven by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Under the Paris climate accord, governments worldwide agreed to pursue efforts to limit global warming to below 2C and ideally 1.5C. However, the agreement’s targets refer to long-term warming over several decades, not individual months or years.
In Europe, this past April was the sixth-warmest on record, Copernicus said. Echoing other scientists’ findings, the agency also noted that much of Central Europe, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom are grappling with a lack of rainfall.
Ocean temperatures worldwide also continue to be abnormally high, the scientists said, with sea surface temperatures outside polar areas registering 20.89C — just below the April 2024 record. Hot seas intensify storms, which can then bring extreme rain and flooding when they hit land.
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