Extreme wildfires in places like the US and Australia have been linked to temperature rise fueled by the burning of oil, gas and coal – Image: ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP/Getty Images

Droughts, hurricanes and wildfires are becoming the new normal. Global temperatures have shattered records for more than a decade.

After a year in which wildfires razed Los Angeles, a freak cyclone battered Southeast Asia and drought forced Iran to plan a move of its capital city, new data shows 2025 was the third warmest on record.

Findings from EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service program also reveal that global temperatures from the past three years averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It is the first time a three-year period has crossed that threshold.

Mauro Facchini, who oversees Earth observation for the European Commission, described it as a “milestone none of us wished to reach.”

Scientists have long warned about the dangers of passing this temperature threshold set out in the 2015 Paris climate accord. They stress warming above that level will mean more days of extreme heat, as well as increased deadly flooding and devastating storms.

Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus’s climate change service, said the world is on track to cross the threshold in the longer term.

“The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems,” he said in a press release.

Scientists agree on the need to simultaneously cut greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning to clean energy, while adapting to live on a warming planet.

At last year’s United Nations climate summit, countries pledged $120 billion (€102 billion) for vulnerable nations to fund adaptation projects like sea walls, early-warning systems, and drought-resistant crops. Climate finance promises have not always amounted to action.

El Nino contributed to the three-year trend

Greenhouse gases, which absorb and trap heat in the atmosphere, remain the leading cause of hotter global temperatures. Released when we burn oil, coal and gas to power our cars or heat and cool our homes, they are connected to an increase in extreme weather events that are claiming lives around the world.

The problem is made worse by the destruction of natural carbon sinks like forests that would otherwise absorb CO2.

“Atmospheric data from 2025 paints a clear picture: human activity remains the dominant driver of the exceptional temperatures we are observing,” said Laurence Rouil, director of Copernicus’s atmosphere monitoring service, adding that “greenhouse gases have steadily increased over the last 10 years.”

The consequences were visible across the globe. Copernicus found that sea ice at both the North and South Poles hit a record low in 2025. In addition, the Antarctic had its warmest annual temperature on record and half of the world’s land area experienced more dangerously hot days than usual.

“The atmosphere is sending us a message, and we must listen,” Rouil said.

DW.com/NAN 15-1-26

Residents are getting out early as the latest bushfires threatened towns across Victoria – Image: Kylie Shingles/AFP

Australians flee as wildfires rage

Another Australian summer, another spate of catastrophic wildfires. As DW’s Stuart Braun watched the flames rip through Victoria in recent days, he says locals are getting out while they can.

It was 1 a.m. and I struggled to sleep as wind blasted through the forest canopy and the smell of smoke hung in the air from distant fires.

Pastures and bushland were fueling a widening fire-front about 90 kilometers (56 miles) to the north of our mountain home on the edge of Melbourne. In between, endless valleys of fire-prone Eucalyptus forest, dried out over hot summer weeks, were a tinderbox ready to explode.

I’m lucky to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. But with just a single road out, it can also be very dangerous.

Earlier that evening I had texted a friend whose family owned a large property in the growing fire zone. All but his brother had evacuated, and he was hoping for a change in wind direction.

“Definitely leave,” he wrote when I said my family and I were planning to get out the following morning. “Sounds like a bad day tomorrow.”

The next day, heat wave temperatures were forecast to reach 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of the southern Australian state of Victoria. Powerful winds would multiply existing blazes as a “catastrophic” fire danger warning came into effect.

These would be the worst conditions since 2019-2020 when fires engulfed much of southeastern Australia — an area the size of the United Kingdom. Those so-called “Black Summer” fires burnt for months destroying more than 3,000 buildings and claiming 33 lives. Around three billion animals died or were displaced.

During those fires, we were based in Germany. But this time, we are in the same house we lived in when the devastating 2009 “Black Saturday” fires swept through the region, killing 173 people — many in the valleys just beyond our forest cabin.

Back then, we were very naive. We only left the property at the last minute as ash fell from the sky and cyclonic winds turned hundreds of square kilometers of bush into an inferno. For others who fled at the final moment, it was too late. Many were found burnt in their cars.

We had been lucky enough to find sanctuary at a pub with other locals, resigned to watching the wildfires sweep over the mountain and engulf our homes. But a late wind change saved our valley.

Fires fueled by a hotter climate

Black Saturday was arguably Australia’s first megafire of the climate change age.

The driest inhabited continent on earth, Australia has already warmed around 1.6 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times — about 1.4 times the global average. Meanwhile, 2024 and 2025 were the second and fourth hottest years on record.

Hotter temperatures are driving more intense, and destructive, wildfires. This property is a victim of the Longwood fire in Victoria’s north – Image: Michael Currie/AAP/REUTERS

While Australia’s eucalyptus forests are designed to burn as part of a natural regeneration cycle, rising temperatures make them fodder for bigger, more frequent and intense wildfires that self-generate lightening, thunderstorms and hurricane-like winds.

Residents getting out early

The consistency of extreme fire weather in Australia has shifted policy — and attitudes.

When Black Saturday hit more than 15 years ago, residents routinely stayed back to safeguard their homes.

But extreme bushfires are becoming impossible to defend against. An investigation into those tragic blazes reviewed a “stay and defend or leave early” policy, which has now been replaced with an approach that encourages residents to get out well in advance.

When the fires peaked last week, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan advised residents to evacuate. “I know how hard it is to leave homes,” she said. “But it’s the best way to save lives.”

The morning after my sleepless night, we followed those instructions. Some neighbors, we discovered, had packed up and left in the middle of the night.

The need to adapt to a new climate reality has been helped by an array of emergency fire and weather phone apps, and a deluge of information from local councils helping residents prepare for the next catastrophe.

Fires incinerated this family property near the town of Yea in Victoria – Image: privat/DW

Back in 2009, when so many lives were lost, we only had the radio and hazy anecdotal reports to help us make decisions. There was a sense that firefighters were not only battling the primary blazes but had to divert resources to save people caught in the fire who had not evacuated in time.

This time, communities were opening their doors to evacuees. A friend who owns a pub outside the fire zone, made her hotel rooms available to people fleeing a large grass fire to the north. “People can camp in the band room if needed,” she told me by text as the pub was filling up.

Several towns ultimately lost dozens of buildings as fires ripped through settlements in the central Mount Alexander Shire around the town of Castlemaine. The local mayor, Toby Heydon, reported that there were no direct casualties — one man died of a heart attack while fleeing the flames — and praised residents for heeding the call to leave early.

“You guys put your safety and the safety of the community first by getting out of harm’s way,” he told people gathered at a relief center.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, visited these same devastated towns in the aftermath. Yet despite his concern, some have wondered why his government has approved 32 major fossil fuel projects since taking office in 2022.

The new coal and gas facilities are expected to produce over 6.5 billion tons of greenhouse gases, which amounts to one-eighth of global annual emissions, say experts.

Burning fossil fuels is the biggest driver of climate change. As an apocalyptic fervor gripped Victoria in the first days of this new year, some commentators noted the irony that climate-amplified extreme weather was again hitting one of the world’s biggest fossil energy producers.

Lives saved but fires will continue to devastate

So far, one life has been lost in these latest Victorian bushfires that have been declared a disaster.

Properties in our valley were spared, and we returned home after two days in the city. But I have little sense of relief.

My friend who encouraged us to get out was later told that his family property near the town of Yea, lovingly built over generations, was tragically destroyed. Several fire trucks could not save it.

Few are untouched by the devastation of these worsening wildfires.

DW.com/NAN 15-1-26

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