“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,” said Adam Scaife, who leads the team behind the Met Office’s global forecast for 2026.
Next year will likely be among the four warmest on record, the UK’s Met Office has said.
The weather forecasters estimates the global temperature for the year to be around 1.46C above the average for the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). This would make 2026 the fourt in a row to be above 1.4C.
“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,” said Adam Scaife, who leads the team behind the Met Office’s global forecast for 2026. “Prior to this surge, the previous global temperature had not exceeded 1.3C,” he added.
Hottest Decade
The increase in extreme heat is a direct result of our warming planet, which is driven by greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. This raises Earth’s surface temperature, leading to longer and hotter heatwaves.
Table: Martina Igini/Earth.OrgSource: NOAA
The relentless growth of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere has coincided with a steady rise in global temperatures, with the last 10 years making up the top 10 hottest years on record.
2024, which tops the ranking, was also the first year above 1.5C, the critical global warming temperature threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, 2025 is on track to be the second- or third-warmest year on record, possibly tied with 2023.
Martina is a journalist and editor with experience covering climate change, extreme weather, climate policy and litigation. She is the Editor-in-Chief at Earth.Org, where she is responsible for breaking news coverage, feature writing and editing, and newsletter production. She singlehandedly manages over 100 global contributing writers and oversees the publication’s editorial calendar. Since joining the newsroom in 2022, she’s successfully grown the monthly audience from 600,000 to more than one million. Before moving to Asia, she worked in Vienna at the United Nations Global Communication Department and in Italy as a reporter at a local newspaper. She holds two BA degrees—in Translation Studies and Journalism—and an MA in International Development from the University of Vienna.