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For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. It was equivalent to the energy it would take to boil 2 billion Olympic swimming pools.

The world's addiction to fossil fuels is a "Frankenstein's monster sparing nothing and no one", the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. "Our fossil fuel addiction is a Frankenstein's monster, sparing nothing and no one. All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master," Guterres said in a speech days after 2024 was revealed to have been the hottest year on record and Donald Trump began his second term as US president by pulling the country out of the Paris climate agreement and pledging to "drill, baby, drill" for more oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry gave 75m ( 60m) to Trump's campaign. Guterres said: "What we are seeing today – sea-level rise, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires – are just a preview of the horror movie to come."

It was so hot in 2017 that a computer program threw out an entire year's worth of Alaskan weather data because it seemed like a statistical anomaly. It was so hot, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that Arctic ice might not reliably freeze every year anymore, and the region's tundras are increasingly green as permafrost thaws. It came in second, thanks to an exceptionally warm El Nino year in 2016. Nevertheless, the slight blip in ever-increasing annual global temperature is consistent with an overall warming trend. The planet's temperature has risen by about about two degrees Fahrenheit in the past century, largely due to human activities that emit greenhouse gases.