The year 2027 could be the hottest on record, with a strong El Niño expected to bring further extreme heat, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday, as world leaders gathered for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Turkey.
El Niño acts as a “risk multiplier,” WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo said in Geneva. “Heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for.”
A new WMO report on the state of the climate, released on Monday, shows that each of the last 12 years was the warmest since records began, and that the last four years were the four warmest on record.
According to the report, the average surface temperature from January to September 2026 was about 1.47 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels worldwide. The margin of uncertainty in the analysis is 0.13 degrees, making it possible that the world exceeded the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees. That target was last exceeded in 2024.
30,000 excess deaths from heat in Europe
Extreme weather, which occurs more frequently due to the climate crisis, had devastating effects around the globe this year, the WMO said.
According to preliminary estimates, heatwaves, drought and wildfires in Europe led to more than 30,000 excess deaths this year.
Extreme heat in India in April also affected 146.5 million people, the WMO noted, while more than 1,300 people died in the glacier collapse and flash flood in the Himalayas in August.
Sea level climbs to record
The report notes that the global mean sea level climbed to a record high this year, which WMO experts believe could also be linked to the El Niño climate phenomenon, which shifts rainfall from the land to the sea.
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The developing El Niño, which is set to last into next year, is likely to be the strongest since 1950, Saulo said. The phenomenon, which occurs every few years, causes extreme weather and rising temperatures.
However, climate change also contributed to the rising water levels, the report states, as glaciers worldwide lost more than 400 gigatons of ice in 2025, which corresponds to a sea level rise of one millimetre.
El Niño and climate change
Head of Climate Information at the WMO, John Kennedy, said the additional energy, heat and moisture from El Niño compounds the existing risks of long-term climate change.
He also pointed out that El Niño events had become more frequent in the 20th and 21st centuries, though he did not draw a direct link between this and climate change
