March 2025 was the warmest on record for Europe (and the second-warmest globally), according to the latest monthly Climate Bulletin of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
For Europe, March 2025 was the warmest March, with an average surface air temperature over land of 6.03ºC – which is 2.41ºC above the 1991-2020 average for the month. Temperatures were above average across most Europe, with the largest warm anomalies observed over eastern Europe and southwest Russia.
"March 2025 was the warmest March for Europe, highlighting once again how temperatures are continuing to break records," said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF. A notable exception to these widespread warm conditions was the Iberian Peninsula, with cooler-than-average temperatures, as well as northern Morocco.
Globally, the average surface air temperature for March 2025 was 14.06ºC – which is 0.65ºC above the 1991-2020 average for March, and only 0.08ºC below the warmest March on record (which was last year).
Wettest and driest anomalies
The month of March also saw the second-warmest global sea surface temperature outside the polar regions at 20.93ºC. The highest was recorded in March last year, at 21.05°C.
"It was also a month with contrasting rainfall extremes across Europe, with many areas experiencing their driest March on record and others their wettest March on record for at least the past 47 years," Burgess said.
March was the 20th month in the last 21 months with a global average temperature of more than 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial level.
Most of southern Europe saw wetter-than-average conditions, with a series of severe weather events in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), but also Norway, much of Iceland and parts of north-western Russia.
Credit: Copernicus
Conversely, it was drier than average over the United Kingdom (with the sunniest March since 1919) and Ireland, with some low precipitation records broken and across a large west-east band across central Europe extending to Greece, Turkey and the Black Sea.
Several areas in the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans, north-western Russia and parts of Norway saw their wettest anomalies on record for the period 1979-2025. Parts of Germany, the UK and Ireland, Turkey and Sweden recorded the driest anomalies.
For the fourth consecutive month, the Arctic also saw a new record low sea ice extent for the time of the year, 6% below average. March is also the period when it typically reaches its annual maximum, marking also the lowest annual maximum extent in a dataset going back to 1979.
Antarctic sea ice recorded its fourth-lowest monthly extent for March, at 24% below average.
