El Niño Pushes 2026 Toward Hottest Year Ever as COP31 Opens

World leaders and negotiators opened COP31 in Turkey on Monday, and the science landed with a thud. Berkeley Earth, the independent US research group, told BBC News it is 95% confident that 2026 will beat 2024 as the hottest year ever recorded — even with two months still to go.

October already went down as the hottest on record, the EU's Copernicus climate service confirmed on Friday. Dr Robert Rohde of Berkeley Earth pointed to the pattern behind it: carbon dioxide concentrations climbing, mostly from burning fossil fuels, plus a powerful El Niño. 'We have had a run of record warm years,' Rohde said. 'That is what we expect as global warming progresses… glaciers collapsing, record-breaking heatwaves and droughts.'

The human toll is already on the table at COP31. Delegates arrive after extensive wildfires tore across Europe and a sudden glacier collapse in Nepal killed more than 1,000 people. Rohde warned the current records are not the ceiling. 'There is potential for much larger and much more dramatic changes down the line,' he said.

The UN's World Meteorological Organization published its own forecast on Monday, more cautious than Berkeley's but still bleak: 2026 will rank among the four warmest years on record, and 2027 offers no relief, with an unusually strong El Niño carrying into next year. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said the numbers 'give new meaning to the phrase off the charts.'