Earth’s 3rd-warmest February on record » Yale Climate Connections

February 2025 was Earth’s third-warmest February in analyses of global weather data going back to 1850, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported Mar. 12. NASA also rated February 2025 as the third-warmest February on record, 1.49 degrees Celsius (2.68 °F) above the 1880-1899 period, which is its best estimate for when preindustrial temperatures occurred. The European Copernicus Climate Change Service also rated February 2025 as the third-warmest February on record.

This is the first month in nearly two years – since May 2023 – that did not rank as either first or second warmest on record for that month globally, a sign that the remarkable surge in global heat kicked off by the strong 2023-24 El Niño event atop longer-term human-caused warming has finally abated in the presence of weak La Niña conditions (see below). However, global readings remain substantially higher than they were in any year prior to the mid-2010s.

Global land areas had their fourth-warmest February on record in 2025, and global oceans had their second-warmest February, according to NOAA. Oceania had its second-warmest February; South America, its third-warmest; Asia, its eighth-warmest; Africa its 12th-warmest; North America, its 22nd-warmest; and Europe, its 27th-warmest. As detailed in our post on Monday, the contiguous U.S. had its 52nd-warmest February and 26th-warmest winter since 1895.

Northern Hemisphere snow cover during February 2025 was near average.

Weak La Niña event expected to end this spring

A weak La Niña event began in December, NOAA reported in its February monthly discussion of the state of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, or ENSO (a new update is scheduled to be released Mar. 13). The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (which uses a more stringent threshold than NOAA for defining La Niña conditions) does not recognize that a La Niña event occurred this year, and says that we have been in ENSO-neutral conditions.

If the event persists for five overlapping three-month periods, or long enough to qualify as a La Niña episode, it will be the latest-starting episode in NOAA records going back to 1950.

Over the last several weeks, persistent westerly winds in the easternmost tropical Pacific have pinched off the cool upwelling typical of La Niña and led to sharply warmer-than-average temperatures near South America, while slightly cooler-than-average surface waters remain over the central equatorial Pacific (see embedded skeet below). In between, sea surface temperatures are neutral in the Niño3.4 region. El Niño events typically develop from west to east, rather than in the current east-to-west mode, and subsurface waters remain quite cool throughout the eastern equatorial Pacific. So these recent events do not necessarily imply any shift toward a full-scale El Niño as we head beyond northern spring – the time when we are in the midst of the low-skill “spring predictability barrier” for ENSO (see this 2015 explainer from climate.gov).

According to NOAA’s February forecast, La Niña conditions are expected to persist through February-April 2025 (59% chance), with a transition to ENSO-neutral likely during March-May 2025 (66% chance). For the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season (August-September-October), the Feb. 19 Columbia University International Research Institute for Climate and Society forecast called for a 35% chance of La Niña, a 48% chance of ENSO-neutral, and a 17% chance of El Niño. El Niño conditions tend to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity through an increase in wind shear, but La Niña conditions tend to have the opposite effect.

While El Niño events often last only one year (usually from northern fall to northern spring, as in 2023-24), La Niña events often restrengthen or recur across two or even three years in a row, as was the case from mid-2020 to early 2023.

Arctic sea ice: lowest February extent on record

Arctic sea ice extent during February 2025 was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record, beating the previous record set in 2018, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC. The February mark follows a January with the second-lowest extent on record, and a December that with record-low extent. So far in March, sea ice extent has set new record lows each day, beating out the previous record lows from 2018. The Arctic had its warmest February on record in 2025, and the winter of 2024-2025 (December-January-February) was its warmest winter on record (see Skeet above).

Antarctic sea ice extent reached its seasonal low on March 1, tying with 2022 and 2024 for the second-lowest minimum in the 47-year satellite record. The Antarctic had its 23rd-warmest February on record in 2025.