The Copernicus Climate Change Service said 2021 was the fifth-warmest year, with record-breaking heat in some regions.
And the amount of warming gases in our atmosphere continued to increase.
Governments are committed to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C to curb climate change. But scientists warn that time is fast running out.
The environmental, human and economic costs of hotter temperatures are already being seen globally.
Europe lived through its warmest summer, and temperature records in western US and Canada were broken by several degrees. Extreme wildfires in July and August burnt almost entire towns to the ground and killed hundreds.
"These events are a stark reminder of the need to change our ways, take decisive and effective steps toward a sustainable society and work towards reducing net carbon emissions," Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, explains.
The Copernicus data comes from a constellation of Sentinel satellites that monitor the Earth from orbit, as well as measurements taken at ground level.
Copernicus data showed that 2021 was the fifth-hottest on record, marginally warmer than 2015 and 2018. Taken together, the past seven years were the hottest seven years on record by a clear margin, the agency explained.
The 2021 average temperature was 1.1-1.2C above the pre-industrial level around 150 years ago.
The concentration in the earth's atmosphere of two gases that significantly contribute to climate change rose in 2021, said Copernicus.
Carbon dioxide concentrations reached 414.3 parts per million last year, growing at a similar rate to 2020.
But scientists remarked that methane levels in the atmosphere increased to reach an unprecedented approximately 1,876 parts per billion. The growth rate of methane was also higher than in 2020 - Copernicus said both rates were very high compared to the past two decades of satellite data.
Scientist say it is important to reduce methane levels because it is more potent than CO2, however it lasts much less time in the Earth's atmosphere.
More about: climate temperature
