Met Office: 2026 likely to be more than 1.4C warmer than pre-industrial levels

Next year is likely to be the fourth year in a row where global temperatures are more than 1.4C above pre-industrial levels, the Met Office said.

In its annual outlook for global average temperatures, the Met Office said 2026 would be an estimated 1.46C above a baseline of 1850-1900, as a warming “surge” continues.

That is below the 1.55C seen in the hottest year on record in 2024, but would put 2026 as one of the four warmest years on record – and the fourth in a row to breach the 1.4C barrier.

Last year, 2024, was the first year to break the seminal 1.5C threshold to which countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to avoid its most dangerous impacts, under the international Paris Agreement, and it is possible 2026 could do the same.

Professor Adam Scaife, who leads the team behind the Met Office’s global forecast for 2026, said: “The last three years are all likely to have exceeded 1.4C and we expect 2026 will be the fourth year in succession to do this.

“Prior to this surge, the previous global temperature had not exceeded 1.3C.”

The forecast puts the average global temperature between 1.34C and 1.58C, with 1.46C as the central estimate, above the 1850-1900 baseline before large-scale burning of fossil fuels took off.

The Met Office’s Dr Nick Dunstone, who led production of the forecast, said: “2024 saw the first temporary exceedance of 1.5C, and our forecast for 2026 suggests this is possible again.

“This highlights how rapidly we are now approaching the 1.5C Paris Agreement target.”

In the Paris climate treaty, secured in 2015, countries committed to curb global warming well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to curb rises to 1.5C to try to avoid the worst impacts of rising sea levels, drought, floods, heatwaves and extreme storms wrought by climate change.

Scientists have repeatedly warned of the increasingly severe impacts of higher warming, and the shrinking ability of people and nature to adapt to the changes, with every fraction of a degree making a difference in avoiding the worst effects of climate change.

But the UN has warned the world is still on track for warming of 2.8C on current policies, or around 2.3C to 2.5C if all the promised action by countries is delivered.

Earlier this year, the World Meteorological Organisation estimated that current levels of global warming, outside of temperature fluctuations between years, is 1.37C above the average for the 1850-1900 period.