The past three years were the warmest on record, with 2025 being the third hottest, climate scientist Zack Labe has said.

This trend means increasing extremes and more high-impact events, Dr Labe said during a Climate Central webinar on climate change.

“This increasing global warmth that we are seeing — due to human-caused climate change — is causing greater heatwaves, more intense precipitation, heavy rainfall and other types of extreme storms,” the scientist said. “This increases risk and impact to communities around our planet.”

Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Climate Central researches and reports on climate change science, impacts and solutions. Climate Central scientists use data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that stretches back to 1850.

Dr Labe said the Arctic has seen one of the fastest rates of warming on the planet, heating up at a rate four times the rest of the world.

There were also temperature extremes in Europe and parts of Asia, and in the global ocean.

“More than 90 per cent of heat is absorbed into our ocean, so it is a real clear indicator of our warming planet, and again, both in the upper ocean and the deep ocean, we see new record highs for total global ocean heat content in the last year, consistent with our long-term trend.”

The warming trend continued for all months of the year in 2025 except for December.

“It didn’t fall within the top three hottest months, but it did fall within the top five,” he said.

Dr Labe said it was not just temperatures that were anomalous in 2025, but the planet also saw a number of different types of extreme precipitation events.

He put blame for global warming on greenhouse gases, heat trapping gases in the atmosphere, caused by human-driven fossil-fuel emissions.

“We continue to see rising levels of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide as well, and all of this is contributing to this more heat and energy imbalance of our planet that is human-caused climate change.”

The 2015 Paris Agreement saw 195 countries agree to an accord to slow global warming and transform fossil fuel-driven economies within decades.

The objective was to cap global warming at “well below 2C”, with a view to limiting this figure to 1.5C.

Dr Labe said we are getting closer and closer to the number outlined in the Paris Agreement.

“That number, 2C, is not necessarily a magic number where the impacts get much worse as soon as we reach it,” he said. “It is this number that just shows you that we are getting closer and closer. More and more warming is increasing the number of impacts around our planet.”

He said information from the World Meteorological Organisation suggests that there is a 70 per cent chance that the next five-year average will have global temperatures increase by 1.5C degrees or more.

The scientist said there is a bit of natural variability that can cause unusually warm or cool years, but that is not likely the cause of the recent warming spike.

“There might be other factors involved,” he said. “One of those could be changes in marine shipping aerosols.”