The cool year won.
What most people think
El Niño heats the world for a year, La Niña cools it back, and the two cancel out. Like a swing.
What the data shows
1.44°C
2025 was a La Niña year. It still finished second-warmest ever, hotter than 2016, which was an El Niño record.
The cooling did happen. It just started from a much warmer ocean.
A La Niña year, 2025 still tied second-warmest ever at 1.44°C above the 1850–1900 average.
In plain terms Two panels: on the left what most people assume, on the right what the numbers show, with the one figure that settles it.Source · Carbon Brief State of the Climate 2025
Fifty-seven years, one stripe each.
One stripe a year. Look at the cool years, and where they now sit.
Every year since 2015 sits above every year before it, the cool years included.
In plain terms Each stripe is one year’s temperature — cooler years blue, warmer years red — with a line tracing the trend.Source · Berkeley Earth · Copernicus C3S ERA5 · WMO State of Global Climate 2025 · Carbon Brief (2026 = projected best estimate)
Three words, one line each.
Cool years included, the last dozen stripes sit above all the rest.
- El Niño and La Niña
- The Pacific's warm phase and its cool phase. Each runs about a year, and they take turns.
- garam saal, thanda saal
- Pre-industrial
- The world's temperature before factories, averaged over 1850 to 1900. Every figure here counts up from there.
- Energy imbalance
- Earth takes in more heat than it lets out: the extra has to go somewhere, and most of it goes into the sea.
Of every hundred units, the sea keeps 91.
The ocean's share of Earth's extra heat
91%
The air you feel holds one part in a hundred. The sea holds the rest.
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91 units of every 100 the planet traps, held in the sea Land holds five parts, ice three, the air one.
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In 2025 alone the sea gained 39 years of human energy use The ocean's record heat gain that year.
More than 91% of the excess heat goes into the ocean.
In plain terms One number, large, and beside it the everyday things it equals, so the size can be felt rather than read.Source · WMO State of Global Climate 2025
Why the next cool year starts higher.
Think of the ocean as a geyser that never switches off.
Of every 100 units of extra heat the planet traps, about 91 go into the ocean and stay there.
Some of that stored heat spills into the air. The world's surface temperature jumps for a year.
The air cools a little, but the ocean is warmer than the last time. So the next 'cool' year starts above the old floor.
Source · WMO State of Global Climate 2025 · NOAA Climate Prediction Center
Two cool years, one direction.
Read the two cool years against each other, not against the hot ones.
2022, a cool year, landed at 1.1–1.3°C. 2025, also cool, landed at 1.44°C.
In plain terms The headline numbers from the story, each with its unit and a one-line note.Source · Carbon Brief State of the Climate 2022 / 2024 / 2025 · WMO State of Global Climate 2025
Hot, cool, hot, cool, then April.
The same decade, in six dates.
In plain terms The key events in order down a rail, with coloured dots flagging the pivotal moments.Source · WMO · NOAA Climate Prediction Center · Carbon Brief
A super El Niño, then the lag.
637 runs from thirteen modelling groups, pointing the same way.
El Niño has a 61% chance by mid-2026. The year has a 62% chance of ranking second-warmest.
In plain terms The headline numbers from the story, each with its unit and a one-line note.Source · NOAA Climate Prediction Center · Carbon Brief Q1 2026 State of Climate · WMO Likelihood Increases of El Niño
The record most likely lands in 2027.
The Pacific warms first. The world's temperature follows about three months behind, which means the record year is usually the year after the El Niño.
That is how the last three record years arrived: each one the year after its El Niño peaked in the Pacific. So if this one peaks late in 2026, the record it sets will most likely show up the year after.
The forecasters put this year's best estimate at 1.47°C and give 2027 the better chance of the record. Then the Pacific will cool again, but that cool year will start from an ocean warmer than today's. Its floor will sit above 1.44°C, the same way each landing on a staircase sits above the last.
The Pacific peaks first and the world's temperature follows about three months later, so this El Niño's record most likely lands in 2027. The next cool year starts above 1.44°C.