Global warming could breach 1.5°C more than a decade earlier than predicted, scientists warn
Global temperatures have averaged more than 1.5°C over the past three years, suggesting that the Paris Agreement goal to limit long-term warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels could be breached by 2030, according to the EU’s meteorological service.
In its Global Climate Highlights Report 2025, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) put the “exceptional warmth” of the years 2023 to 2025 down to high sea-surface temperatures caused by the El Nino phenomenon and other natural variations, and rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – caused mainly by human activities.
“Atmospheric data from 2025 paints a clear picture: human activity remains the dominant driver of the exceptional temperatures we are observing,” said Laurence Rouil, director of the ECMWF’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. “Atmospheric greenhouse gases have steadily increased over the last ten years… The atmosphere is sending us a message, and we must listen.”
The UN Paris Agreement aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Read more: First climate ‘tipping point’ has been crossed, finds major report in stark warning ahead of COP30
Based on current rates of warming, governments that signed the pledge could fail to meet this second goal – which is measured over 20 years to account for natural fluctuations – by the end of the decade. This is more than 10 years sooner than scientists expected when world leaders signed the Paris Agreement in 2015.
The ECMWF report highlights that the last 11 years were the warmest on record, which Carlo Buontempo, director of the ECMWF’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said “provides further evidence of the unmistakable trend towards a hotter climate”.
He added: “The world is rapidly approaching the long-term temperature limit set by the Paris Agreement. We are bound to pass it; the choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”
Read more: President Trump withdraws US from UN climate treaty and 65 international bodies
‘No sign of respite’
In June last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN’s weather and climate agency, predicted that there was a 70% chance that the five-year average warming for 2025-2029 would exceed the 1.5°C limit.
This likelihood increased from 47% in the WMO’s 2024 report (covering 2024-2028) and from 32% in the 2023 report (covering 2023-2027).
The WMO warned that every additional fraction of a degree of warming drives more harmful heatwaves, extreme rainfall events, intense droughts, melting of ice sheets, sea ice, and glaciers, heating of the ocean, and rising sea levels.
“We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record,” Ko Barrett, WMO deputy secretary-general said last year. “Unfortunately, [our analysis] provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”
She added: “Continued climate monitoring and prediction is essential to provide decision-makers with science-based tools and information to help us adapt.”
UN secretary-general António Guterres stressed in January 2025 that individual years pushing past the 1.5°C-degree limit “do not mean the long-term goal is shot” but that governments would need to “fight even harder to get on track… There’s still time to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe. But leaders must act – now.”
Read more: Global temperatures set to breach 1.5°C threshold over next five years, UN says
COP30 underdelivers
COP30 in Brazil last November closed with a deal to mobilise US$1.3 trillion annually to drive climate action and efforts to triple funding for developing countries to adapt to climate impacts by 2035. It also includes a plan to operationalise the loss and damage fund agreed at COP28 – which aims to compensate vulnerable countries for climate-induced losses – and initiatives to help countries deliver on their nationally-determined contributions (NDCs).
NDCs are the emission reduction targets set by individual countries, and are a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement.
Many countries left the summit disappointed that the agreed deal didn’t include a push for countries to strengthen their NDCs where deemed inadequate – which dozens of countries had demanded – or any mention of a plan to phase out fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of global warming.
Guterres acknowledged after the summit that the deal had not delivered what is required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. “I cannot pretend that COP30 has delivered everything that is needed. The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide.”
Read more: Deal reached at COP30 – but omissions steal the show
About Mia Hunt
Mia has been editor of globalgovernmentforum.com since 2019. She has 15 years’ experience as a journalist and editor and specialises in writing for civil and public servants worldwide, including covering sustainability policy and related issues. She has led the Global Government Women’s Network since it launched in 2023. Previously, she covered commercial property having been market reports and supplements editor at Property Week and deputy editor at Retail Destination. She graduated from Kingston University London with a first-class honours degree in journalism and was part of the team that produced The River newspaper, which won Publication of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2010.
