New Delhi

Last month was the second-warmest April globally, with the past 12 months being 1.58 degrees Celsius warmer than at the start of the industrial revolution, according to European climate agency Copernicus.

The agency said April's global average surface air temperature of 14.96 degrees Celsius was 0.60 degree Celsius above the 1991–2020 average for the month.

April 2025 was 0.07 degree Celsius cooler than April 2024 and 0.07 degree Celsius warmer than the third-warmest April recorded in 2016, it said.

"April 2025 was 1.51 degrees Celsius above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level. It was the 21st month in the last 22 months for which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level," Copernicus said in a statement.

The 12-month period from May 2024 to April 2025 was 0.70 degree Celsius above the 1991-2020 average and 1.58 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, it said.

Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of Copernicus Climate Change Service, said, "Globally, April 2025 was the second-hottest April on record, continuing the long sequence of months over 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Continuous climate monitoring is an essential tool for understanding and responding to the ongoing changes in our climate system."

Human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, have pumped large amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This has raised the planet's temperature, altered the climate, and led to more frequent and severe floods, droughts, storms and other extreme weather events.

At the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, countries pledged to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The year 2024 was the first calendar year when the global average temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels.

However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit refers to long-term warming over a 20 or 30-year period.

Scientists at Copernicus said the average sea surface temperature (SST) for April 2025 was 20.89 degrees Celsius, the second-highest value on record for the month.

SSTs remained unusually high in many ocean basins and seas. Among them, large areas in the northeast North Atlantic continued to show record-high SSTs for the month.

Most of the Mediterranean Sea was much warmer than average, but not as record-breaking as in March. The Arctic sea ice extent was 3 per cent below average, the sixth lowest monthly extent for April in the 47-year satellite record, following four months with record low monthly values for the time of year.

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The Antarctic sea ice extent was 10 per cent below average, making it the 10th lowest on record for the month.