New Delhi, Nov 6: The year 2025 is set to be either the second or third warmest one on record, with the alarming streak of exceptional temperatures continuing throughout the year so far, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
This will make the past 11 years, from 2015 to 2025, the warmest 11-year period in the 176-year observational record, with the past three years being the hottest on record.
According to WMO’s “State of the Global Climate Update”, the mean near-surface temperature from January to August 2025 was 1.42 degrees Celsius (±0.12) above the pre-industrial average.
The Paris Agreement, adopted by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Warming has already crossed 1.3 degrees Celsius and global emissions continue to rise.
According to the WMO, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
However, a permanent breach of the 1.5-degree Celsius limit under the Paris Agreement refers to long-term warming over a 20- or 30-year period, not a single year.
The Berlin-based climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics, in a report published on Thursday, said the world will very likely reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the early 2030s.
The WMO report said the warming El Nino conditions that boosted global temperatures in 2023 and 2024 gave way to neutral or La Nina conditions in 2025.
The global mean near-surface temperature from January to August 2025 was therefore lower than in 2024, at 1.42 degrees Celsius (±0.12) above the pre-industrial average, compared to about 1.55 degrees Celsius (±0.13) for the year 2024.
The 26-month period from June 2023 to August 2025 saw an extended streak of monthly record-breaking temperatures, apart from February 2025, it said.
The high global temperatures in the past three years relative to the preceding two years are related to the transition from a prolonged La Niña that lasted from 2020 to early 2023 but reductions in aerosols and other factors likely also played a role, the WMO said.
Concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and ocean heat content, both of which reached record levels in 2024, continued to rise in 2025, it said.
Arctic sea ice extent after the winter freeze was the lowest on record, and Antarctic sea ice extent remained well below average throughout the year.
The long-term sea level rise trend also continued despite a small and temporary blip due to natural factors, the report said.
Weather and climate-related extreme events until August 2025, ranging from devastating rainfall and flooding to brutal heat and wildfires, had cascading impacts on lives, livelihoods and food systems. These contributed to displacement across multiple regions, undermining sustainable development and economic progress, the WMO said.
“This unprecedented streak of high temperatures, combined with last year’s record increase in greenhouse gas levels, makes it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target. But the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
“Each year above 1.5 degrees will hammer economies, deepen inequalities and inflict irreversible damage. We must act now, at great speed and scale, to make the overshoot as small, as short and as safe as possible and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees Celsius before the end of the century,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who cited the WMO report in his statement to the Belém Climate Summit.
WMO released the “State of the Global Climate Update 2025” for the Summit at the UN climate change conference, COP30, in Belem, Brazil.
Since 2015, the number of countries reporting multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWSs) has more than doubled, from 56 in 2015 to 119 in 2024, the report said. However, 40 per cent of countries still lack such systems and urgent action is needed to close these remaining gaps.
