UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for May, 2025: +0.50 deg. C

June 5th, 2025 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for May, 2025 was +0.50 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down from the April, 2025 anomaly of +0.61 deg. C.

The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through May 2025) remains at +0.15 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).

The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 17 months (record highs are in red).

YEARMOGLOBENHEM.SHEM.TROPICUSA48ARCTICAUST
2024Jan+0.80+1.02+0.58+1.20-0.19+0.40+1.12
2024Feb+0.88+0.95+0.81+1.17+1.31+0.86+1.16
2024Mar+0.88+0.96+0.80+1.26+0.22+1.05+1.34
2024Apr+0.94+1.12+0.76+1.15+0.86+0.88+0.54
2024May+0.78+0.77+0.78+1.20+0.05+0.20+0.53
2024June+0.69+0.78+0.60+0.85+1.37+0.64+0.91
2024July+0.74+0.86+0.61+0.97+0.44+0.56-0.07
2024Aug+0.76+0.82+0.69+0.74+0.40+0.88+1.75
2024Sep+0.81+1.04+0.58+0.82+1.31+1.48+0.98
2024Oct+0.75+0.89+0.60+0.63+1.90+0.81+1.09
2024Nov+0.64+0.87+0.41+0.53+1.12+0.79+1.00
2024Dec+0.62+0.76+0.48+0.52+1.42+1.12+1.54
2025Jan+0.45+0.70+0.21+0.24-1.06+0.74+0.48
2025Feb+0.50+0.55+0.45+0.26+1.04+2.10+0.87
2025Mar+0.57+0.74+0.41+0.40+1.24+1.23+1.20
2025Apr+0.61+0.77+0.46+0.37+0.82+0.85+1.21
2025May+0.50+0.45+0.55+0.30+0.15+0.75+0.99

The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for May, 2025, and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.

The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days at the following locations:

Lower Troposphere

Mid-Troposphere

Tropopause

Lower Stratosphere


38 Responses to “UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for May, 2025: +0.50 deg. C”

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  1. Bellman says:

    Third warmest May since 1979, not quite beating the 1998 outlier.

    Ten warmest Mays

    Year Anomaly
    1 2024 0.78
    2 1998 0.52
    3 2025 0.50
    4 2016 0.42
    5 2020 0.42
    6 2017 0.32
    7 2010 0.29
    8 2023 0.28
    9 2019 0.20
    10 2015 0.14

    My simplistic projection for 2025 creeps up another 0.01C. Now 0.49 +/- 0.13C. There is an 80% chance that 2025 will be warmer than 2023.

    • RLH says:

      The trend is downward (and has been for a few months now).

      • Bellman says:

        Of course temperatures are coming down, that’s what happens when you have a record breaking spike. The question is how far and how quickly will it fall.

      • RLH says:

        “The question is how far and how quickly will it fall.”

        How far do you think the fall will be?

      • Geoff Sherrington says:

        Waiting, waiting for a detailed, hard science explanation (with numbers analysed) of the mechanism for this several months of declining trend from those who still promote that CO2 is the control knob. Geoff S

      • David Appell says:

        Geoff Sherrington says:
        Waiting, waiting for a detailed, hard science explanation (with numbers analysed) of the mechanism for this several months of declining trend from those who still promote that CO2 is the control knob.

        Ending of the 2023-24 El Nino.

      • Gee Aye says:

        Yep. And it is quite a bit warmer than after the previous El Nino ended

      • Clint R says:

        To the cult, when temps go up it’s due to CO2. But when temps go down, it’s due to “natural variability”.

        If they understood the physics, it’s ALL due to natural variability.

        But of course, they don’t understand….

      • barry says:

        The CO2 “control knob” exerts its influence over decades, not months.

        When oh when will people learn the difference between climate and weather?

      • Stephen P Anderson says:

        Barry,

        Your champion Abrego Garcia is being returned to the US. Happy now?

    • red krokodile says:

      The signal to noise ratio decreased in July 2023, when the global temperature anomaly spiked abruptly and unusually. If that spike triggered cascading effects in other systems, such as the cryosphere or oceans, the SNR degrades even further over time.

      It will likely take years, if not decades, of new observations to establish a reliable new baseline.

    • Bindidon says:

      Bellman

      People like RLH are always looking at tiny downward looking bits, but deliberately dissimulate the context around the bits.

      Here is a chart showing the running trend in C / decade for UAH 6.1 LT, from the starting period

      Dec 1978 – Dec 1999 (0.149 +- 0.02)

      till that computed right now

      Dec 1978 – May 2025 (0.155 +- 0.01)

      *

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jXp9gn9SR4NvvzsSHwRXQyd_jbgVpX6b/view

      There is currently NO downeard trend at all.

      Oz4caster’s running trend will certainly be no different.

      *
      And by the way: his chart starts with 2014; UAH’s LT trend for Jan 2014 till May 2025 is only… 0.384 +- 0.06 :-))

    • Bindidon says:

      Moreover, nothing spiked unusually since 2023: you just need to lokk at UAH’s running trend and will see for example a similar trend increase between March 2001 and March 2003.

      Amazingly, the trend difference for that period is (down to 5 digits atdp) even exactly identical to the difference between April 2023 and May 2025: 0.02396 C / decade.

      *
      These spikes however can’t compete with the big drop the UAH LT time series experienced from March 2007 down to December 2009: -0.02786 C / decade.

      Such differences look ridiculously small at a first glance; but please think that we look at a value range between 0.11 and 0.16.

      • red krokodile says:

        Wrong!

        You are focusing on a different metric, which overlooks some important aspects of the situation.

        The satellite measurements lag SSTs by ~3-4 months, so a spike in satellite temperature in July 2023 reflects oceanic conditions from March-April 2023.

        According to NOAA OIST data, global SSTs broke the super El Ni-ño 2016 record in early March 2023 and remained above it thereafter. This happened even while the climate system was officially still in La Ni-ña.

        That is extremely difficult to explain using conventional natural variability alone.

        Looks like we’re back to square one. Only 28 more years to go for a new reliable baseline for the WMO to use.

    • Bindidon says:

      Finally, I saw that I forgot to add in the chart the period which had the greatest trend increase for the trend periods greater than about 15 years: that moving from UAH’s lowest trend (Dec 1978 – Apr 1994) after the Pinatubo eruption, up to the highest UAH trend (Dec 1978 – Feb 1999) following the 1997/98 El Nino.

      This is the corrected running trend chart:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSHRwujG1zkLBSMHYd79O3uS_Had0GmV/view

      We can now see that the trend increase between post-Pinatubo and post-Nino 97/98 makes all subsequent drops and peaks seem secondary.

      • Tim S says:

        Data smoothing with 10 year averages does not illuminate the data trends, it hides it. Congratulations! Your graph is wrong anyway because you cannot have a 10-year trend in the current year. The last possible year is 2020.

        Nice try, but a rather poor effort again.

      • red krokodile says:

        Bindidon, trends are most sensitive to noise early in the dataset, so it is no surprise the 1998 El Ni-ño, which was exceptionally strong and occurred just as the trend turned positive, produced the largest spike in your trend based record.

        Yet here you are criticizing RLH for pointing out a short term cooling period. At least he chose a window that begins after the signal to noise ratio shifted.

        Now look at 2016: a comparable El Ni-ño, but far more muted in your trend plot because it landed over 20 years into a longer, more stable dataset.

    • Bindidon says:

      red krokodile

      1. ” The signal to noise ratio decreased in July 2023, when the global temperature anomaly spiked abruptly and unusually. ”

      *
      If you don’t want to be seen as an average WUWT poster, the very first thing you should do is at least technically prove such a claim by either citing a scientific source that anyone can consult or, even better, by publishing a time series that shows us visible results that confirm your claim.

      Otherwise, all you’re doing here is pulling the wool over the readers’ eyes.

      **
      2. ” According to NOAA OIST data, global SSTs broke the super El Ni-ño 2016 record in early March 2023 and remained above it thereafter. ”

      *
      This is indeed beyond any suspicion.

      What makes me laugh here however is that at WUWT for example, anyone showing sea surface data confirming her/his claim is automatically discredited with a hint on UAH data looking – of course – quite different.

      **
      3. ” Bindidon, trends are most sensitive to noise early in the dataset, so it is no surprise the 1998 El Ni-ño, which was exceptionally strong and occurred just as the trend turned positive, produced the largest spike in your trend based record. ”

      *
      And once again, this is a claim without any technical background, based more on your personal narrative, which in turn most likely stems from a naive, undifferentiated reading of the WUWT blabber.

      I doubt you’ve ever calculated any relationship between any trend and any noise detected in any data.

      **
      4. ” Yet here you are criticizing RLH for pointing out a short term cooling period. At least he chose a window that begins after the signal to noise ratio shifted.

      *
      Your technical / scientific proof for this brazen allegation?

      **
      5. ” Now look at 2016: a comparable El Ni-ño, … ”

      Here you definitely lack technical skills and experience.

      Simply because you apparently ignore that one can’t simply compare two distant events occuring in a time series: the later (earlier) event and the earlier (later) one, contain, in addition to their actual, intrinsic value, the trend of the time series surrounding them.

      You therefore have to detrend the time series before comparing:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ih30toYF4Oe-DDzUrP-CAHFhZdrgAp-q/view

      And then – only then – you will see that while for example the top anomaly in the 1997/98 El Niño event moves from 0.62 up to 0.71 C above the 1991-2020 mean, the top anomaly in the alleged 2015/16 Super-El Niño event in fact moves from 0.70 down to 0.52 C.

      **
      6. ” … but far more muted in your trend plot because it landed over 20 years into a longer, more stable dataset. ”

      *
      Wrong, for the very same reason.

      You just have to look in the cascaded running mean (btw highly appraised by… RLH) to understand that nothing confirms your claim, as the right half of the cascade (0.51% noise passthru) shows a greater deviation from the mean than the left one.

      ***
      I’ve once again spent over two hours responding to your completely unsubstantiated claims.

      This is definitely the last time I’ll waste such time on you.

    • Bindidon says:

      Tim S

      ” Data smoothing with 10 year averages does not illuminate the data trends, it hides it. Congratulations! Your graph is wrong anyway because you cannot have a 10-year trend in the current year. The last possible year is 2020.

      Nice try, but a rather poor effort again. ”

      *
      This is really the dumbest reply to any of my comments published since 2016.

      While you constantly try to present yourself on this blog as a well-educated and informed gentleman farmer with extensive knowledge, able to contribute to any discussion, you show (not only today, not only here) that you behave, on the contrary, like a retired elementary school teacher who has never acquired any technical knowledge, let alone ever experienced any complex scientific education.

      *
      What you posted above was at the level of Clint R’s ball on a string idiocy.

      *
      You apparently never learned what is a running trend time series and hence don’t understand what it shows, but nonetheless dare to discredit and denigrate the one I presented.

      *
      The dumbest I have ever read is

      ” Your graph is wrong anyway because you cannot have a 10-year trend in the current year. ”

      *
      The graph shows, as I wrote above, a monthly series of linear trends for UAH 6.1 LT Globe with monthly increasing periods, starting with the period ‘Dec 1978 till Dec 1999’, and ending with the current trend for the period ‘Dec 1978 till May 2025’, published a few days ago by no less than… Roy Spencer en personne.

      *
      What you invent with such stoopid smoothing and 10-year trend stuff bypasses the imagineable.

      Tim S: refrain from responding to my technical comments with such nonsense in the future.

      • Tim S says:

        Every one of my comments is thoughtful, accurate, technically correct, and most importantly, as polite as possible. Unless I missed something, all of the discussion here by everyone is about the unusual warming of the last 2 years. Your graph with “monthly running trend C / decade” is data smoothing. All of the fine detail disappears. The only other option is that it is mislabeled. It is that simple. In any case, it hides the effect of the last 2 years just as I stated.

        Your rambling comment is disorganized and contains immature attempts to insult me. That is my assessment based on my experience writing high level tchnical reports that undergo peer review. I have an exceptional education, and real world experience. That includes extensive experience analyzing DCS data (process data) in graphs that I personally create. Most businesses archive their DCS data with 10 second intervals, so I happen to know the value of fine detail.

        Everyone I have worked with over the years would laugh at your comments. If I seem “dumb” to you, then I think I will take that as a compliment in the context of your statement.

  2. TheFinalNail says:

    Looks like the warmest autumn/fall on record for Australia. +1.13C on average for Mar-May. Beats the previous Oz autumn record in UAH, +0.88 in 2016, by +0.25C.

  3. bdgwx says:

    The Monckton Pause extends to 24 months starting in 2023/05. The average of this pause is 0.67 C. The previous Monckton Pause started in 2014/06 and lasted 107 months and had an average of 0.21 C. That makes this pause 0.46 C higher than the previous one.

    My prediction for 2025 from the March update was 0.43 +/- 0.16 C.

    My prediction for 2025 from the April update was 0.47 +/- 0.14 C.

    My prediction for 2025 using the May update is now 0.46 +/- 0.11 C.

  4. Nate says:

    The last 20 y trend is 0.3 C/decade.

  5. Tim S says:

    The atmosphere is cooling. Everything is consistent with an unexplained sharp rise that is now retreating. The volcano theory may be more than just hot air. The ship exhaust was already rather far-fetched, and mostly just a bunch of smoke from Hansen. ENSO does not seem to explain this either. The mystery continues. On to next month for more clues.

  6. barry says:

    Since the 2016 revision to UAH that lowered the trend from the old 5.6 version, the long term trend has risen with nearly every new month’s data.

    • RLH says:

      Linear trend. i.e. a straight line, unlike anything else in nature.

      • Bindidon says:

        ” unlike anything else in nature. ”

        But which you coward always used when it fitted your personal narrative. You just need to look back in some of your 2021 posts which were over and over full with WFT trend graphs showing cooling since 2016 of course.

    • PhilJ says:

      Yet the trend over the longest possible time (when the surface was yet molten) remains downward as it must continue to do.

      Over any significant time period the Earth must always lose more energy than it receives as the 2LoT demands

  7. AaronS says:

    This is a record-breaking spike in tropospheric temperatures, initiated by a moderate El Niño event in the Pacific. The anomaly may have been amplified by the massive water vapor injection from the Tonga eruption. Other reason so large a spike?

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