The report
The World Meteorological Organization used COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, to present its State of the Global Climate 2026. The finding was continuity rather than surprise: another year among the hottest on record, record ocean heat content, continued loss of glacier ice and a sea level that keeps rising as warm water expands and land ice melts.
The agency said a very strong El Niño is building in the tropical Pacific and will push global temperatures higher into 2027, because the ocean releases stored heat into the atmosphere during such events. Sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific could run close to 4C above average between November and January.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres told delegates the world had entered a new age of climate extremes and described the Pacific pattern as a supersized El Niño. He said early warning systems and finance for vulnerable countries were the immediate priorities.
The numbers behind the politics
A separate UNEP assessment, published last month, put current policies on a path to roughly 2.8C of warming this century. It found that holding 1.5C is no longer possible without at least a temporary overshoot, followed by large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The arithmetic is steep. Emissions would need to fall about 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040 against 2019 levels. At present rates the world adds roughly 0.1C every five years. The report estimates a 50% chance of returning to 1.5C by 2100, and only if countries deliver cuts they have promised but not yet legislated.
What the summit can deliver
COP31 is structured around adaptation finance and the first global stocktake of the loss and damage fund. Delegates are also negotiating rules for carbon markets under Article 6, which would let governments trade emissions reductions and could unlock private money for forest and cookstove projects.
The political backdrop is weaker than the science. The United States has withdrawn from the IPCC process and its environmental agency no longer applies a human-health value when assessing ozone and fine particulate rules. That removes the largest historical contributor from the room and shifts the centre of gravity toward the European Union, China and the Gulf.
Why the gap keeps widening
Every year of delay raises the total cut needed, because the carbon budget shrinks while the economy grows. Renewable power is now the cheapest new electricity in most markets, but grids, permits and storage are the bottleneck, not generation cost. Until those clear, installed capacity will keep trailing the targets that governments announce.