Climate scientists warn of record rate of global warming, carbon budget to be exhausted in 3 years

Emissions of climate-warming pollutants are at an all-time high, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.

Human activities pushed global warming to 1.37C in 2025, and the rate of heat building up in the Earth’s system is intensifying, scientists say.

The annual “indicators of global climate change” update by leading scientists finds clear evidence the world is continuing to heat, with global warming set to surpass a key threshold of 1.5C in about four years.

Under 2015’s Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to curb temperature rises to 1.5C.

The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, warns the “carbon budget” – the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the world can emit and still keep temperature rises to 1.5C – is likely to be exhausted in just three years. The budget for 1.7C will be used up in 12 years.

Emissions of climate-warming pollutants are at an all-time high, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.

There are signs greenhouse gas emissions growth is slowing, with factors such as the high price of oil and the shift to electric cars and renewables potentially beginning to lead to a peak and decline in emissions, researchers said.

But the findings show global warming continues at an unprecedented rate, with the Earth heating at 0.27C per decade, while 2025 was the third hottest year on record.

Professor Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds and lead author, said: “A key indicator is the Earth’s energy imbalance, which measures how fast heat is accumulating in the climate system, and provides a crucial measure of the pace of climate change.

“Without human influence, it should be close to zero, but it has been growing since the 1970s and is now at a record high, doubling in recent decades.”

This is driving warming on land and in the oceans, which have seen a huge increase in marine heatwaves which occurred on 65 days in 2025 alone, the melting of ice and rising sea levels.

In 2025, global sea level rise reached a new record of 23cm rise since 1901, with seas rising around 1.8mm a year, a rate that is “speeding up fast”, according to Dr Aimee Slangen, research leader at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

“This might sound small, but even this level of change is increasing coastal flooding in low-lying areas around the world, harming livelihoods and ecosystems,” she warned.

Dr Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said nearly all of the warming over the past decade was driven by human activities, with the impacts set to accelerate.

“There are signs that carbon dioxide emission growth is slowing, and this doesn’t mean that we’re on track yet, but it does mean that policy, technology, and societal choices are starting to bend the curve.”

Dr Burgess said it was important to have conversations to understand how to continue on the trajectory, warning “the next few years are really critical”.

She said the report, which provides annual updates on key climate indicators reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is not “just a scientific scorecard”.

“Its a real-time feedback system on the global climate and global climate policy,” Dr Burgess said.

Source: PA