The world breached the Paris Climate Pact’s 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold last year, after coming perilously close to it in 2023. The global temperature in 2025 is virtually certain to be close to that of the past two years, according to Copernicus, the EU’s earth observation programme. This means that the three-year period from 2023 could be the first to exceed the 1.5 degrees warming limit. The EU observatory’s data has striking similarities with the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) analysis, released in the run-up to COP 30. It estimated that the decade closing by the end of this year would be the warmest since the second half of the 19th century.

Scientists interpret the Paris temperature target as a 30-year average. So it would be wrong to conclude that the world has reached

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