Data leads scientists to declare 2015 Paris agreement to keep global heating below 1.5C ‘dead in the water’
Last year was the third-hottest on record, scientists have said, with mounting fossil fuel pollution behind “exceptional” temperatures.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said 2025 had continued a three-year streak of “extraordinary global temperatures” during which surface air temperatures averaged 1.48C above preindustrial levels.
Current rates of heating could breach the Paris agreement limit of 1.5C (2.7F) – which is measured over 30 years to iron out natural fluctuations – before the end of the decade, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate agency. That is more than 10 years sooner than scientists expected when world leaders signed the pledge in 2015.
“We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus climate change service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences.”
