NASA reports record heat but omits reference to climate change

White concrete building on desert. (Pexels/Tom Swinnen)

Don’t say the c-word.

Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.

That marks a sharp break from last year’s communications, issued under the administration of U.S. Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: “This global warming has been caused by human activities” and has led to intensifying “heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall and coastal flooding.”

Last year’s materials also featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year’s release only runs through a few key facts and figures, and totals six paragraphs.

“The press release and publicly available data provide the official agency analysis,” the U.S. space agency said in response to a request for comment about the shift in tone.

According to NASA, Earth’s global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than in 2023 -- albeit within a margin of error -- making it effectively tied as the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

Other global agencies, including the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which use different methodologies and modeling, say 2025 ranked as the third-hottest.

“The U.S. government is now, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, a petrostate under Trump and Republican rule, and the actions of all of its agencies and departments can be understood in terms of the agenda of the polluters that are running the show,” University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann told AFP.

“It is therefore entirely unsurprising that NASA administrators are attempting to bury findings of its own agency that conflict with its climate denial agenda.”

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, added: “I’m just happy they were allowed to put out a press release.”

“Pretty much all federal scientists working on climate in the U.S. have had to self-censor and leave out reference to human influences on climate change, unfortunately,” he told AFP. “Thankfully much of the underlying science is still occurring, even if they cannot talk about it.”

NASA’s analysis found that average temperatures for 2025 were 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (1.19 C) above the 1951–1980 average.

It was based on data from more than 25,000 meteorological stations worldwide, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research stations, with the data analyzed and corrected for changing distributions of temperature stations and urban heating effects that could skew the results.

By Issam Ahmed.