Scientists warn of accelerated warming and escalating extreme weather, urging urgent, intensified climate action to curb severe future impacts.

Britain’s Met Office, with input from 13 international institutes, highlights persistent and intensifying climate extremes across the globe.

Ahead of Paris Agreement discussions and amid recent heatwaves, including a May temperature record in the UK, the report underscores intensified climate impacts and the need for action.

The Paris Agreement targets to limit human-caused warming are reinforced as the new WMO report consolidates projections from 13 institutes, including the German Weather Service.

Projections rely on about 200 ensemble simulations from 13 climate models, with implications for policy, planning, and adaptation across sectors like agriculture, infrastructure, and disaster preparedness.

Experts caution that small overruns above 1.5°C are not a cliff edge but accumulate risks, threatening food security, ecosystems, and livelihoods.

Even modest increases above 1.5°C can magnify heat, droughts, wildfires, and other extremes, reinforcing the goal to cut fossil fuels and curb warming.

Crossing or persisting above 1.5°C has broad, compounding impacts; the emphasis remains on reducing emissions to limit these effects.

A warming trajectory driven by human emissions and natural variability could push the 2026–2030 period to exceed the 1.5°C pre-industrial threshold on average, with an 86% chance that at least one year in that span will surpass the previous warmest year on record.

The Arctic is warming about 3.5 times faster than the global average, with winters several degrees warmer and sea ice likely to continue shrinking in summers.

A strong El Niño is forecast to develop this winter and may endure into 2027, further elevating global temperatures toward record highs.

The findings rely on around 200 ensemble simulations from multiple climate models and call for stronger emission cuts, as current efforts aren’t keeping pace with warming.