The forecast for 2026 suggests that it is likely to be one of the four warmest years on record, in terms of global average temperature, UK weather agency the Met Office said today.
The Met Office's central estimate for 2026 puts the global average temperature at 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels. The range the agency forecasts is between 1.34°C and 1.58°C above the pre-industrial average. The central estimate suggests that 2026 will be the fourth consecutive year that the average temperature will be at least 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels.
"Prior to this surge, the previous global temperature had not exceeded 1.3°C", the Met Office's Professor Adam Scaife said. Scaife leads the team behind the global forecast for 2026.
The global average temperature in 2024 was 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels, making it the hottest year on record, several international weather and science agencies agreed.
The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit the global rise in temperature to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pursues a 1.5°C threshold. The Paris accord's temperature parameters work on a longer timeframe, of at least two decades, so a temperature breach across a year or a few years does not render the accord broken. The World Meteorological Organisation in March estimated that the current level of global warming is at 1.37°C above pre-industrial levels.
And climate science "may be underestimating the magnitude of human-induced global warming", given a recent surge in global temperatures, the UN Environment Programme said earlier this month.
This year is "on course" to tie with 2023 as the second hottest year on record, EU earth-monitoring programme Copernicus said earlier this month. The global average temperature anomaly for January-November this year is 0.60°C above the 1991-2020 average, and 1.48°C above the pre-industrial reference period of 1850-1900, Copernicus data show.
