May is the warmest month on record in the world, and extremely cold in Poland

This year's May was the second warmest May in the world, but in Poland it was extremely cold. Cold Mays are becoming less frequent; it is a moment of respite from climate change - Bogdan Chojnicki, professor at the University of Life Sciences in Poznań, told PAP.

According to the Copernicus Report, a monthly study on global climate change, May 2025 was the second warmest May on record in the world . The average surface air temperature was 15.79 degrees Celsius, or 0.53 degrees Celsius above the 1991–2020 average for that month.

May was also 1.40°C warmer than the estimated 1850-1900 average that serves as a baseline for the preindustrial era (though it interrupted a 21-month period during which the global average temperature was 1.5°C warmer than the preindustrial period).

In turn, according to the report of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, the average temperature in May was 11.1 degrees Celsius, which the Institute classified as an extremely cold month.

"Climate change is a type of chronic disease that slowly worsens, like a temperature increase that progresses very slowly. Last May, however, was a 'moment of respite', when the disease made itself less noticeable," Bogdan Chojnicki, a climatologist and professor at the Poznań University of Life Sciences, told PAP. "The temperature on the globe is constantly rising, the values ​​are still extreme and new records are being broken. The temperature is also rising in Poland. It should be noted that this year is still 1°C warmer than the reference standard for the period 1991-2020. January, March and April were anomalously warm. These were not extreme differences, but significantly above the norm," he noted.

According to IMGW, the warmest cities were Słubice, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Wrocław and Zielona Góra. The coldest were Zakopane, Elbląg, Suwałki and Lesko. "There have been cold Mays in the history of measurements, but the time distance between them is clearly increasing. We are increasingly dealing with extremely warm ones - which fits well into the definition of climate change," commented Chojnicki.

The anomaly values ​​ranged from 0°C to -3°C, with the highest being in the east of the country, where minus 3.6°C was recorded in Kozienice and Terespol.

"Poland is located in a transitional climate zone, between two air masses: cold, northern, and warm, southern, maritime. Various phenomena and their extreme faces are bound to appear. However, it should be noted that there are fewer and fewer of these cold air masses over Poland," he added.

Despite this year's cool May, the upward trend in air temperature continued. The strongest increase occurred in the Southern Baltic Coastal Belt, at 2.3 degrees Celsius, and the weakest in the highlands, at 1.5 degrees Celsius. May 2025 was also characterized by very high variability in the average daily temperature, felt even from day to day. Compared to last year, where May was extremely warm, this year is characterized as extremely cold. "It fits into the upward trend in temperature in Poland, as a kind of break in the general trend," he informed.

The total precipitation amounted to 57.8 mm and was 5.8 mm lower than the norm for this month. It was classified as average. Precipitation amounted to 90.9 percent of the norm. This is the first May since 2022 in which precipitation was not significantly lower. The highest precipitation totals were recorded in the Tatra Mountains, on Śnieżka and Lesko, where they were above 100 mm, while the lowest were recorded in Western and Central Pomerania and in Gorzów Wielkopolski, they amounted to 30 mm. In terms of regions, the lowest precipitation totals were in the north-western part of Poland. In this area, they did not exceed 50 percent of the norm. In Lower Silesia, Warmia and Mazury and in the Bieszczady Mountains, the total precipitation was as much as 150 percent higher than the norm. (PAP)

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