2025, among the hottest years ever, UN report: Impossible to limit global warming

Extremely high temperatures have put 2025 on track to be among the hottest years ever recorded, the United Nations said, stressing that the trend is still likely to stop.

Meanwhile, although this year will not surpass 2024 as the hottest year ever recorded, it will rank second or third, capping a decade of unprecedented heat, the UN's climate and weather agency said in a report released as world leaders gathered in the Brazilian Amazon ahead of the UN's COP30 climate summit next week.
These developments "imply that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the coming years without temporarily exceeding the Paris Agreement target," said the head of the World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Saulo, addressing leaders in Belem, northern Brazil.

The Paris climate agreement, reached in 2015, aimed to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to 1.5 degrees Celsius, if possible.
Saulo insisted that while the situation is dire, "the science is clear that it is entirely possible and essential to reduce temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century."
UN chief Antonio Guterres has called the failure to meet the temperature goal a "moral failure."
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, the UN's chief climate scientist, Chris Hewitt, said that "we still don't know how long we will be above 1.5 degrees Celsius."
"This depends on the decisions we make now... So this is one of the main challenges of COP30."
But leaders have yet to fulfill their commitments from the Paris Agreement.
Already, the years between 2015 and 2025 have individually been the hottest since weather observations began 176 years ago, the UN said.
The years 2023, 2024 and 2025 are at the top of the list.
In the report of the Agency for Climate and Weather, the temperature near the ground - about two meters above the ground - during the eight months of this year was on average 1.42 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
At the same time, concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and heat in the oceans continued to rise, reaching levels higher than those in 2024, the report said.
The UN report said the impact of rising temperatures could be seen in the extent of sea ice in the Arctic, which after freezing over this winter will be the lowest ever recorded.
The United Nations agency also cited extreme weather events that occurred during the first eight months of 2025, from devastating floods, to severe heat and wildfires, with "severe consequences for lives, livelihoods and food systems."