The ice lost from glaciers in 2025 would have filled five Olympic-sized swimming pools every second that year, according to the latest report from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The agency estimated that the world’s glaciers lost more than 400 billion tonnes of ice in 2025. Global records of glacier mass loss go back to 1975.
Global sea level reached its highest point on record, and sea surface temperatures set monthly records in 2026, the WMO said.
UN secretary-general António Guterres warned that the world had entered a new age of climate extremes, with those who contributed least to the climate crisis suffering the worst effects.
“A supersized El Niño is colliding with a planet already superheated by manmade climate change. Climate records keep falling.
“The human costs keep rising. And those least responsible are suffering first and worst.
“Leaders must get serious by cutting emissions faster, accelerating a just transition from fossil fuels and delivering the finance and protection vulnerable countries need,” he said in a WMO statement on Nov 9 accompanying its latest climate report.
The WMO presented its update on global temperatures yesterday on the opening day of COP31, the UN climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye.
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The WMO said 2026 continued a long run of exceptionally high global temperatures, melting ice and rising sea levels. The report also highlighted the knock-on risks to the environment, the economy and everyday life.
The WMO expects 2026 to rank among the four warmest years in the global temperature record, which dates back to 1850. From January to September 2026, the global mean surface temperature was 1.47°C above the pre-industrial average.
From January to September 2026, the global mean surface temperature was 1.47°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average, with an uncertainty of ±0.13°C. The year 2024 still holds the annual record at 1.55°C above the pre-industrial average.
The final ranking for 2026 will depend on data for the full year.
Reduction in crop yields
The WMO warned that El Niño could reduce crop yields, particularly in areas that rely on rainfall for farming.
WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said El Niño would increase the risk of heatwaves, drought and heavy rainfall into 2027.
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“We are supercharging our weather, and El Niño will be a risk multiplier. Heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for.
“Hundreds of millions of people this year have been exposed to unbearable extreme heat, whilst the catastrophic ice and rock collapse and flash floods in Nepal highlighted the compound risks facing communities in fragile, warming high-mountain terrain.”
In India, an estimated 146.5 million people were exposed to extreme heat during an April heatwave. In Nepal, a glacier collapse in the Himalayas in late August triggered a flash flood that killed more than 1,300 people.
Preliminary estimates cited by the WMO show that deaths in Europe over the summer exceeded the expected number by more than 30,000. Several countries on the continent experienced heatwaves, drought and wildfires during that period.
A study reported by The Guardian estimated that heat claimed about 50,000 lives in 854 European cities from June to August 2026, the highest toll in the study period dating back to 2000.
The researchers attributed 65 percent of those deaths to human-induced climate change, with the highest death rates in Malta, Italy and Hungary./file/publisher-c1a3f893382d2b2f8a9aa22a654d9c97/2026/08/c7c9af3d56ac0632c79c88a20f05427f.jpg)
In Nepal, a glacier collapse in the Himalayas in late August triggers a flash flood that killed more than 1,300 people
- Mkini
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