‘It’s pretty bleak’: A warming planet is poised to get even hotter, forecasters warn

As hot, dry and disastrous as the last few years have been, it appears that the chaos caused by a warming planet is just getting started.

Though the hottest year in nearly two centuries was recorded only last year, the world will probably shatter that record yet again by 2029, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization, the climate and weather arm of the United Nations.

There is a very good chance that average warming over the next five years will be more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels, the cap established by the Paris Agreement to ward off the worst consequences of climate change. There’s an even better chance that at least one of those years will be more than 2.7 degrees above the 1850 to 1900 average.

That means we can expect many more days when the weather feels freakish and far more natural disasters that cost people their homes, health or lives.

“It’s pretty bleak,” said Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “My fear is that [the coming years] will be even warmer than they suggest, and the impacts will continue to catch us by surprise and be more severe than we expect across the world, including the American West.”

In the western U.S. states, including California, those effects most probably include drought, heat waves and longer fire seasons with more intense wildfires, climate scientists said.

“As the globe has warmed thus far, the western U.S. has warmed as well, but without increases in precipitation that compensate for the drought- and wildfire-promoting effects of warming,” UCLA professor Park Williams said.

Last year, Williams examined 1,200 years of geological records and found that the previous 25 years were probably
the driest quarter of a century since the year 800. He sees no reason why that trend won’t continue.

“Given that there is not even a whiff of a hint that our global greenhouse gas emissions are going to slow in the next few years, then it appears virtually certain that the globally averaged temperature will continue to set new records every few years or so, just as it’s done over the past four to five decades,” Williams said.

The projections in the U.N. report are based on more than 200 forecasting models run by scientists at 14 research institutes around the globe, including two managed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report found an 80% chance that at least one year in the 2025 to 2029 period will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record, and an 86% chance that at least one of those years will exceed the 2.7 degrees warming target.

It estimated a 70% likelihood that average warming over that period will be more than 2.7 degrees, though total warming averaged over 20 years — the Paris Agreement standard — will probably remain below that threshold.

“Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet,” Ko Barrett, deputy secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in a statement.

The consequences of warming will probably vary widely across the world, the report found: rapid thawing of Arctic sea ice, drier seasons in the Amazon, excess rain in places such as Alaska, northern Europe and the Sahel in north-central Africa.

Hotter temperatures are more effective at evaporating water out of plants and soil, leading to droughts and failed crop seasons. At the same time, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which increases the chance of flood-inducing downpours and hurricanes.

Episodes of climate “whiplash” — rapid swings between wet-to-dry and dry-to-wet conditions — are also growing more frequent and intense because of rising global temperatures.

The devastating Palisades and Eaton wildfires in January erupted after such a period. Unusually heavy rains in 2023 led to an explosion of new vegetation, which dried out and turned into kindling during an exceptionally dry 2024.

The same week that the fires began, government agencies in the U.S. and around the world confirmed that 2024 was the planet’s hottest year since recordkeeping began in 1880. It was the 11th consecutive year the record had been set.

The U.S. will likely head into this period of climate chaos with a drastically reduced ability to forecast disasters and head off their worst consequences.

Rounds of firings have reduced staffing at NOAA, including in the agency’s National Weather Service. The Trump administration has proposed a $1.5-billion cut to NOAA’s budget in 2026, a 25% reduction from the previous year’s spending.

Those budget cuts are part of a wider turn away from climate mitigation efforts.

The U.S. already had a messy relationship with the Paris Agreement. It withdrew from the international accord just days before President Trump lost his reelection bid in November 2020. The U.S. rejoined when Joe Biden entered the White House in January 2021, but pulled out again when Trump began his second term in January.

Trump has gone even further to roll back U.S. climate science this time.

The phrases “climate crisis,” “clean energy” and “climate science” are among the prohibited terms that federal funding recipients and employees must reportedly strike from websites, reports, regulations and other communications.

In April, the administration dismissed more than 400 scientists and other experts who started writing the latest National Climate Assessment report, a congressionally mandated assessment of the latest climate change science and mitigation progress.

Meanwhile, the warming trend continues. And there’s no withdrawing from the planetary consequences.

“It’s scary. It really is,” Flannigan said. “A lot of people are ignoring this, or [saying] ‘it won’t be in my backyard.’ But it’s going to be in just about everyone’s backyard soon.”