Every December, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) asks: was it a bad year for extreme weather? And each year, the answer becomes more unequivocal: yes. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, driving global temperatures upward and fuelling increasingly destructive climate extremes across every continent. Although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record and the impacts of this hotness were unmistakable.

The 2025 report reviews some of the worst extreme weather events of 2025 the WWA team has studied, documenting the severe consequences of a warming climate and revealing, once again, how unprepared we remain. Across the 22 extreme events analysed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities; and wiped out crops. Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world.

The report underscores that even in a year that had weak La Nina conditions, that lead to lower sea surface temperatures, global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real. It is not a future threat, but a present day reality.