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This July was the third warmest on record globally, according to the latest data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

It was 0.27°C cooler than the warmest July in 2023 and 0.23°C cooler than July 2024, the second warmest. Last month also came in at 1.25°C above the pre-industrial average from 1850 to 1900 and is only the fourth month in the last 25 not to reach the 1.5°C threshold. 

Carlo Buontempo, C3S Director, says two years after the hottest July, the recent streak of record global temperatures “is over – for now”.

“But this doesn’t mean that climate change has stopped,” he adds. 

“We continued to witness the effects of a warming world in events such as extreme heat and floods in July. Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of these impacts – and we must prepare for that.” 

Record regional temperatures

July was Europe’s fourth-warmest on record overall. There were still hotspots within that where countries faced record-breaking heat, however. 

Fennoscandia, a geographic region that includes the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland, the Kola Peninsula, and Karelia, experienced Europe’s most pronounced above-average temperatures. 

A weather station in the Norwegian part of the Arctic Circle recorded temperatures above 30°C for 13 days in July. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute said July was the third hottest month recorded in the country since 1901, with temperatures 2.8°C higher than the season average. A two-week period between 12 and 25 July was the hottest ever recorded in the country. 

Finland had three straight weeks of 30°C heat, with scientists saying it was the longest streak since records began in 1961 and 50 per cent longer than the previous record. Mika Rantanen, a climate scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said in a post on social media that it was a “truly unprecedented heatwave.” 

Türkiye set a national record temperature of 50.5°C in Silopi in the southeast on 25 July. The Environment Ministry said that 132 weather stations across the country had registered record temperatures for the month, with some up to 12°C higher than seasonal averages. 

In Spain, extreme heat saw 1,060 deaths attributed to high temperatures during July, a 57 per cent increase from 2024. 

Rain brings flooding across Europe

In July, C3S says precipitation was above average over most of central Europe, northern France, eastern UK and southern Ireland, southern Scandinavia, regions of north-eastern Europe, northern Italy and the northern Adriatic coasts, northern Iceland, eastern Spain, and western Russia.

Intense rain brought severe flooding in southern France and Paris. Severe weather in Italy caused landslides and floods across Rome and the Piedmont region at the beginning of the month. 

And Spain saw widespread flooding after torrential rain hit Catalonia and northeastern Spain in the middle of July. National weather service AEMET said that 10 centimetres of rain fell in a matter of hours near Barcelona. 

Drier than average conditions across Ferrodandia, Greece, the Balkans, the coasts of the Black Sea, and southern France have brought their own problems, too. 

Wildfire risk rises amid high heat and dry conditions

Hot weather and dry conditions, following an unusually dry and warm spring, fuelled fires across southern Europe last month. 

The end of July saw Spain battling blazes on multiple fronts. In Portugal, more than 3,000 fires had burnt a total of 10,768 hectares by 15 July – three times more than during the same period last year. The Iberian Peninsula declared a state of alert over the weekend due to the worsening risk of wildfires. 

Both Greece and Türkiye also battled major blazes, with thousands of hectares of land burned. 

So far in the EU this year, a total of 353,862 hectares of land have burned – more than twice the area burnt during the same period last year, according to the latest data from the European Forest Fires Information System.

Marine heatwaves hit some parts of Europe in July

On average, sea temperatures in July were the third highest ever recorded for the month, 0.12°C below the record set in 2023. 

But the Norwegian Sea, parts of the North Sea, and an area of the North Atlantic just west of France and the UK hit record highs in July. 

The UK’s Met Office said in early July that waters south of the country were experiencing a “significant marine heatwave”. Sea surface temperatures were more typical of early August in the 1980s and 90s. 

Between 28 June and 9 July, Portugal’s southern Algarve region also experienced a marine heatwave, the country’s maritime authority said. Temperatures were “significantly higher” than the average over the last 20 years, reaching up to 25.1°C.