Warning over 1.5C climate goal as 2025 set to be among hottest years ever and major polluters stay away from COP30 conference

"As leaders gather in Belem, Brazil, for the latest round of UN climate talks, the WMO said it was "virtually impossible" to curb global warming to the agreed limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the next few years without temporarily overshooting the target. But it is "still entirely possible and essential" to bring temperatures down to the 1.5C goal by the end of the century, WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said."

"This year has been slightly cooler than last year as the El Nino climate phenomenon in the tropical Pacific, which boosted global temperatures in 2023 and 2024, shifted to neutral conditions at the start of 2025. The El Nino/La Nina pattern influences the global climate in addition to the warming caused by humans burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, which put heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, pushing up temperatures and sea levels and causing more extreme weather."

"The WMO's analysis finds that the past 11 years - from 2015, when countries signed up to the Paris Agreement to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C to avoid its worst impacts, to 2025 - are individually the 11 warmest on record. The past three years have been the three warmest years in the record stretching back 176 years, the WMO said. The UN's meteorological agency also warned that concentrations of greenhouse gases, which reached record levels in 2024, continued to rise in 2025."

Global average surface temperatures for January to August 2025 were 1.42°C above pre‑industrial levels, slightly below the 1.55°C peak in 2024. Curbing warming to 1.5°C in the next few years is virtually impossible without temporarily overshooting the limit, but returning to 1.5°C by the end of the century remains possible and essential. The year has seen damaging rainfall, floods, severe heat and wildfires, even as some governments roll back climate action. El Niño shifted to neutral in early 2025, slightly cooling the year, while human emissions continue to raise greenhouse gases, temperatures, sea levels and extreme weather. The past 11 years are the warmest on record and greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise in 2025.

Read at Irish Independent