2026 is on track to become one of the four hottest years since records began in around 1850, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday, as nearly 200 countries gather in Turkey for the COP31 climate talks.
Between January and September, the global average temperature stood 1.47 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the WMO’s annual State of the Climate report found, and it could climb further as a powerful El Niño develops. The report draws on nine separate data sets.
Every one of the past 12 years, including 2026, now ranks among the 12 warmest ever recorded. The European Union’s Copernicus climate service has already said 2026 is all but certain to become only the second calendar year after 2024 to average more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“Every indicator here is telling the same story. We’re seeing the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is showing up in the ocean, in the atmosphere, in the melting of ice and the rising of sea levels,” WMO head of climate information John Kennedy told reporters in Geneva ahead of the conference.
Ocean temperatures continued to rise this year from their 2025 all-time highs, the report said, and global mean sea levels reached a record as glaciers and ice sheets melt and warming seawater expands.
The findings give negotiators at COP31, which runs in Antalya from 9 to 20 November, the latest available data as they begin two weeks of talks on cutting emissions and funding climate action.
Sources: Reuters, “This year set to be one of four hottest on record, UN report says” (https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/this-year-set-be-one-four-hottest-record-un-report-says-2026-11-09/); World Meteorological Organization, State of the Climate report.
File photo: meltwater ponds on the Greenland ice sheet.
