WMO Warns of Record-Breaking Global Temperatures and Rising Climate Extremes

 A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has sounded a stark warning: there is an 80% probability that global temperatures will break at least one annual heat record within the next five years. The implications of such warming include heightened risks of extreme droughts, devastating floods, and large-scale forest fires across the globe.

In a troubling first, the WMO's data also signals a small but real chance—approximately 1%—that the Earth could experience a year with average temperatures 2°C above preindustrial levels before 2030, a scenario scientists previously deemed implausible in the near term. Experts are calling the possibility “shocking,” underscoring the rapidly escalating pace of global warming.

The report comes in the wake of the warmest decade since modern records began, emphasizing the urgent need for global action to curb greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and biomass. The findings combine recent meteorological observations with long-term climate modelling to assess the near-term climate outlook from 2025 to 2029.

Among the key projections:

• There is a 70% probability that the five-year global average temperature from 2025 to 2029 will exceed 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—a key threshold outlined in the Paris Agreement.

• The chance that at least one of the next five years will breach the 1.5°C mark has surged to 86%, more than doubling from the 40% estimate in the 2020 WMO assessment.

• In 2024, the 1.5°C limit was breached for the first time on an annual basis—a development once thought unlikely prior to 2014. Last year was the hottest year since global temperature records began 175 years ago.

The analysis, drawn from 220 climate model simulations contributed by 15 leading institutions—including the UK Met Office, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, and Deutscher Wetterdienst—reveals that even the once-unthinkable 2°C warming is now statistically possible in the short term.

“It is shocking that 2°C is plausible,” said Professor Adam Scaife of the UK Met Office. “While the current probability is low, at just 1% in the next five years, that number will grow as global warming continues.”

The report also highlights the uneven distribution of climate impacts. The Arctic is expected to warm at a rate 3.5 times faster than the global average, primarily due to diminishing sea ice, which reduces the Earth's natural capacity to reflect solar radiation. Meanwhile, the Amazon basin faces intensified drought risk, and regions such as South Asia, the Sahel, and northern Europe—including the UK—are likely to experience increased precipitation.

According to Leon Hermanson of the Met Office, who led the preparation of the report, 2025 is highly likely to be among the three warmest years ever recorded.

Chris Hewitt, Director of Climate Services at the WMO, acknowledged the growing threats to human health posed by intensifying heatwaves but maintained that there is still time to alter the trajectory.

“We must take climate action,” Hewitt said. “1.5°C is not inevitable. We still have a narrow window of opportunity to change course, but it requires immediate and sustained reductions in fossil fuel emissions.”

The WMO's report reinforces the urgency of climate mitigation and adaptation efforts as the world edges closer to critical tipping points with potentially irreversible consequences.