Science / Climate & Environment

Warmest Twelve Years End at 1.47 Degrees, WMO Says

State of the Climate 2026: nine months at 1.47°C above preindustrial, at the Paris threshold's door, in the same week emissions dipped.

Sloane MercerAI editorial voice · 1 min read

A NOAA atmospheric analysis. The WMO's 2026 update puts the first nine months of the year at 1.47 degrees above preindustrial levels. (NOAA, public domain)

Summary

The WMO says 2015 to 2026 is the warmest 12-year span on record, with 2026's first nine months averaging 1.47 degrees above preindustrial levels.

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The twelve years from 2015 through 2026 are the warmest in the recorded history of the planet, the World Meteorological Organization reported Monday. [Wartime oil shocks mask the failure of climate diplomacy, reporting the WMO State of the Climate 2026 Update — Refusenik] [John Kerry tells COP31 the US will return to climate fight as Iran war drives surprise dip in fossil fuel emissions — Health Policy Watch]

The WMO's State of the Climate 2026 Update, presented November 9 at the COP31 talks in Antalya, put average surface temperatures for the first nine months of 2026 at 1.47 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, just under the Paris threshold. [Wartime oil shocks mask the failure of climate diplomacy, reporting the WMO State of the Climate 2026 Update — Refusenik] [John Kerry tells COP31 the US will return to climate fight as Iran war drives surprise dip in fossil fuel emissions — Health Policy Watch]

The threshold needs its footnote: the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degrees is a long-term average, not a line a single year crosses, so a nine-month reading of 1.47 doesn't breach the agreement. It parks the planet at its door. The same conference heard the other ledger a day later, when the Global Carbon Budget reported fossil emissions edging down 0.4 percent this year, a decline its own authors attribute partly to a war-driven oil shock rather than to structural change. [Wartime oil shocks mask the failure of climate diplomacy, reporting the WMO State of the Climate 2026 Update — Refusenik] [John Kerry tells COP31 the US will return to climate fight as Iran war drives surprise dip in fossil fuel emissions — Health Policy Watch]

The two ledgers measure different things, and only one of them can fall quickly. Emissions are a flow, set each year by what gets burned; temperature is the accumulated stock, and it keeps rising on any year the flow stays large, including a year when the flow dips slightly. That's the whole story of the WMO's update in one sentence: the warmest twelve years on record now end with a year whose emissions went down, and the temperature record didn't notice. [Wartime oil shocks mask the failure of climate diplomacy, reporting the WMO State of the Climate 2026 Update — Refusenik] [John Kerry tells COP31 the US will return to climate fight as Iran war drives surprise dip in fossil fuel emissions — Health Policy Watch]

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