2025 set to place among top three hottest years on record — UN

GENEVA, Switzerland — An alarming streak of exceptional temperatures is continuing, with 2025 set to be among the hottest years ever recorded, the United Nations says, insisting, though, that the trend could still be reversed.

While this year will not surpass 2024 as the hottest ever recorded, it will rank second or third, the UN’s weather and climate agency says, capping more than a decade of unprecedented heat.

Meanwhile, concentrations of greenhouse gases grew to new record highs, locking in more heat for the future, the World Meteorological Organization warns in a report released ahead of next week’s COP30 UN climate summit in Brazil.

Together, the developments make “it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5°C in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo says in a statement.

The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and to 1.5°C if possible.

Saulo insists that while the situation was dire, “the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5°C by the end of the century.”