New Delhi: The world will inevitably overshoot the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit, the World Meteorological Organisation warned leaders at the Belem Climate Summit on Thursday, as new data showed 2025 is on track to be the second or third warmest year on record.
The stark assessment came as the US — the world’s largest historical greenhouse gas emitter — was notably absent from COP30 in Belem, Brazil, following the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. China was represented by vice premier Ding Xuexiang and and India by its envoy Dinesh Bhatia. UK was represented by Prince William and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The European Union was represented by by its president Ursula Von der Leyen.
The WMO’s State of the Global Climate Update revealed that the past 11 years, from 2015 to 2025, will rank as the warmest 11-year period in the 176-year observational record, with the past three years claiming the top spots. Last year, 2024, became the first to breach the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels for an entire year.
While a permanent breach of the Paris limit refers to sustained warming over 20 to 30 years rather than individual years, the Berlin-based Climate Analytics institute warned that the world will “very likely” reach 1.5°C of long-term warming by the early 2030s.
{{/usCountry}}While a permanent breach of the Paris limit refers to sustained warming over 20 to 30 years rather than individual years, the Berlin-based Climate Analytics institute warned that the world will “very likely” reach 1.5°C of long-term warming by the early 2030s.
{{/usCountry}}Global temperatures from January to August 2025 averaged 1.42°C above pre-industrial levels, slightly lower than the 1.55°C recorded during the same period in 2024. This marginal cooling reflects the transition from El Nino conditions that boosted temperatures in 2023-24 to neutral or La Nina conditions in 2025.
The 26-month period from June 2023 to August 2025 saw an unprecedented streak of monthly temperature records, broken only by February 2025. The exceptional warming of the past three years followed a prolonged La Nina that lasted from 2020 to early 2023, though scientists note that reductions in aerosols and other factors also contributed.
“This unprecedented streak of high temperatures, combined with last year’s record increase in greenhouse gas levels, makes 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 secretary-general Celeste Saulo told the summit.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned of cascading consequences: “Each year above 1.5°C will hammer economies, deepen inequalities and inflict irreversible damage. We must act now, at great speed and scale, to make the overshoot as small, as short, and as safe as possible.”
China committed to emissions reduction target
Addressing the gathering, Chinese vice premier said, “This is the first time that China put forward an absolute emissions reduction target, which is a testament to China’s firm resolve and maximum effort. The just-concluded fourth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee deliberated over and adopted the recommendations for the economic and social development plan over the next five years. It made important arrangements for building a beautiful China and stressed that, guided by the goals of achieving peak carbon and carbon neutrality, China will make concerted efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, pursue green development and boost economic growth and reinforce ecological security shields and strengthen green development drivers.”
China made three important propositions — to keep the right direction with green and low-carbon transition is the trend of the times. “We need to stay confident, balance such goals as environmental protection, economic development, job creation, and poverty eradication, seek coordinated progress on livelihood improvement and climate governance, and promote high-quality development to deliver greater benefits to the people of all countries,” he said. “Second, we should translate climate commitments into action. Third, we should deepen openness and cooperation. The global transition toward green and low-carbon growth calls for a sound environment for international economic and trade cooperation, he said while calling for removal of trade barriers.”
Ocean warming
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has surged 53% since pre-industrial times, from 278 parts per million in 1750 to 423.9 ppm in 2024. The annual increase of 3.5 ppm between 2023 and 2024 marked the largest jump in recent observational history, with measurements suggesting even higher levels in 2025.
Ocean warming accelerated dramatically, with more than 90% of excess energy trapped by greenhouse gases absorbed by the seas. Ocean heat content in 2025 exceeded 2024’s record levels, whilst Arctic sea ice extent after the winter freeze hit its lowest point on record. Antarctic sea ice remained well below average throughout the year.
The rate of sea-level rise has nearly doubled, from 2.1 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2002 to 4.1 millimetres annually from 2016 to 2025, driven by thermal expansion and accelerating ice loss from glaciers and ice sheets.
For the third consecutive year, all monitored glaciated regions recorded net mass loss. Reference glaciers lost 1.3 metres of water equivalent — approximately 450 gigatonnes — nominally the largest ice loss since records began in 1950. This alone contributed 1.2 millimetres to global sea-level rise.
Weather and climate extremes through August 2025, from devastating floods to brutal heatwaves and wildfires, displaced communities across multiple regions, undermining sustainable development and economic progress, the WMO reported.
Despite progress in early warning systems—with countries deploying multi-hazard systems more than doubling from 56 in 2015 to 119 in 2024 — 40% of nations still lack such critical infrastructure, leaving populations vulnerable to climate impacts.
30 years after Rio summit
Brazil President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “After more than 30 years of the Earth Summit in Rio, the Climate Convention comes back to the country where it was born. Today, the eyes of the world are now looking towards Belem with great expectations. For the first time in history, a climate COP will take place in the heart of the Amazon.”
In the global imagination, there is no higher symbol of the environmental cause than the Amazon forest,” Lula added while stressing that COP30 will be one of most ambitious COPs to reinforce multilateralism during a very difficult geopolitical time.
“Here we have thousands of rivers and igarapés that make up the largest hydro basin in the planet. Here live thousands of species of plants and animals that are part of the most diverse biome on the Earth. Here live millions of people and hundreds of indigenous people, where their lives are faced by a false dilemma between prosperity and preservation…So here are the ones that daily, together, they put together the way they live and seeking for existence and livelihood that is legitimate and with dignity and with the main mission to protect one of the highest cultural heritages of humanity, that is nature,” Lula added.
“So it’s fair to say that it’s now the time, it is the time of the people of the Amazon to ask what is being done by the rest of the world to avoid the collapse of their house. Multilateralism and the Paris Agreement, in the year 2025, that’s a landmark for multilateralism. We celebrate 80 years of the foundation of the United Nations organisation and 10 years of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. The strength of the Paris Agreement resides in the respect of the protagonists of each country in defining their own goals in the light of their national domestic capacities. After one decade, it has become the mirror of the best qualities and also limitations of multilateral actions.”