With the Paris Climate Agreement, the international community wanted to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times - if possible to 1.5 degrees. Now a study in the specialist journal “Nature Climate Change” shows: The earth is on the threshold of this mark - globally, 1.5 degrees is expected to be reached in 2029.
However, different regions of the earth warm up at different rates, as the international team led by Francis Zwiers from the University of Victoria (Canadian province of British Columbia) emphasizes. The Russian Arctic was most affected by 2025 with around 3.3 degrees, northeastern North America at 2.6 degrees, and Western and Central Europe at well over 2 degrees.
In contrast, some regions in Central Africa, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific have warmed much more slowly - New Zealand, for example, is at just over 1.0 degrees. Overall, the team writes, regional warming has already reached 90 to 94 percent of what would be expected with global warming of 1.5 degrees. And 65 to 76 percent of what would be expected at 2 degrees.
In order to determine temperature developments since industrialization as precisely as possible, the research team used a statistical procedure called Kriging for Climate Change (KCC). A number of climate models are compared with concrete observations. In addition, various possible influences on the climate – such as greenhouse gases or aerosols – are examined separately.
“The assignment of warming to individual driving factors confirms that anthropogenic influences are responsible for practically all of the observed regional warming,” emphasizes the research team.
“Greenhouse gases are the dominant factor, while other anthropogenic forcings – especially aerosols – partially offset the warming caused by greenhouse gases, especially in the industrial regions of the northern hemisphere.” However, the quality of the study also depends on the climate models used, the team admits.
In a commentary in Nature Climate Change, Peter Stott from the Met Office Hadley Center in Exeter, England, writes of an “important advance” through the methodology used. “This shows much more clearly how current climate change compares to the Paris climate goals.” So far it has remained surprisingly unclear “how close we are to these goals and what they mean for different parts of the world”.
“As Li and colleagues show, many places on land have already warmed by far more than 1.5 degrees Celsius,” commentator Stott continues. “Some high-latitude regions have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Celsius, and Canada and much of Europe have warmed by more than 2 degrees Celsius.” Consequences are already being felt worldwide, for example in the form of heat waves, floods and melting glaciers and ice sheets.
According to estimates by the German Weather Service (DWD), Germany has already warmed by 2.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. And globally, the 1.5 degree mark was reached in 2024 and most likely also in the current year 2026, as the EU climate change service Copernicus recently announced. However, it is not individual years that are decisive, but rather a long-term average value.
