Global warming: July on the podium of the hottest months, record drought in Europe

This is a podium that doesn't have a taste of victory... July 2025 ranks third among the hottest Julys ever recorded on Earth, the European Copernicus Observatory announced this Thursday.

"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent run of global temperature records is over. For now. But that doesn't mean climate change has stopped," the service director stressed.

As in June, July showed a shift: it was on average 1.25°C warmer than a July in the pre-industrial era (1850-1900), and the 1.5°C warming threshold, enshrined in the Paris Agreement, has been regularly exceeded for the past two years. But the Julys of the last three years remain the three hottest on record.

The urgency remains, he explained, as the world continues to burn ever more oil, coal, and gas, the combustion of which releases CO2. "Unless we quickly stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we must expect not only new temperature records, but also a worsening of these impacts, and we must prepare for them."

This observation comes as the European Drought Observatory has just released its latest data: according to it, 51.9% of soils in Europe and around the Mediterranean were still affected by drought during the period from July 11 to 19, last month.

Eastern Europe and the Balkans, such as Serbia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, are particularly affected.

In Western Europe, the United Kingdom (21%), Germany (26%) and France (19%) remain on alert, especially as this drought is fueling fires, such as the historic and deadly fire that broke out on Tuesday in the Aude region.

While Turkey is not spared either with an alert rate of 18%, conversely, Portugal and Spain remain relatively unaffected with low drought rates (10% and 7%).