India, June 26 -- With data for nearly half of 2025 in, there is both good news and bad news for global temperature. The bad news is that the first half of the year is the second warmest in 2025 and more than 1.5degC warmer than the pre-industrial average, a threshold that global leaders agreed to keep long-term warming under in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The good news is that June warming is likely to end up below the 1.5degC threshold, the second consecutive month to do so. This is likely to keep the probability of 2025 ending as the warmest year lower than it was earlier in the year.

Global temperature data from the ERA5 dataset produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is now available up to June 23. W...