The United Nation’s (UN) weather agency warned that because CO₂ persists in the atmosphere for many years, this accumulation locks in long-term global warming that will impact the climate for generations. WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett noted that the global population is supercharging the ocean and atmosphere, driving rapid intensification of heatwaves, tropical cyclones and severe rainstorms far beyond historical baselines. Methane and nitrous oxide also reached new peak levels in 2025.

The WMO report highlights that atmospheric CO₂ growth rates have tripled since the 1960s, driven by ongoing fossil fuel consumption and natural climate phenomena like El Niño.

While land ecosystems and oceans absorb roughly half of emitted CO₂, the portion that remains in the atmosphere continues to accelerate ‘radiative forcing’ (the difference between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared heat). Data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cited by the UN shows that climate warming effects from GHGs increased by 56% between 1990 and 2025.

The UN agency also raised concerns regarding trace gases tied to the global energy transition, specifically molecular hydrogen and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). The use of SF6, which acts as a spark suppressant in electricity distribution, reached a record high in 2025 despite having a global warming potential roughly 24,300 times greater than CO₂ and a thousand-year atmospheric lifetime. The UN stressed that careful monitoring of these emissions is vital to ensure decarbonisation programmes do not suffer from unintended environmental consequences.

Decades of insufficient climate action have made the likelihood of exceeding the 1.5°C global warming threshold at least temporarily unavoidable, according to a report published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Released under the title The point of return, the 17th edition of the UNEP emissions gap report suggests that while the window to avoid an overshoot has closed, rapid and deep decarbonisation can still limit the scale and duration of the temperature spike before bringing warming back down by 2100.

The UN report outlines a lowest-possible overshoot scenario in which peak warming is restricted to between 1.7°C and 1.8°C mid-century, followed by a trajectory returning temperatures to 1.5°C or below by the end of the century. Achieving this pathway requires slashing global emissions by 18% by the end of the decade, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040 relative to 2025 levels. Current national pledges leave the planet on track for a 2.6°C temperature rise, showing a widening gap between commitments and atmospheric reality.

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen noted that the population possesses a wealth of success stories proving emissions can drop quickly but warned that governments must accelerate clean energy transitions across every sector. The UNEP report suggests that coal-fired electricity generation must fall by at least 75% by 2035 and be fully phased out by 2040, alongside steep reductions in oil, natural gas and methane emissions. The report also calls for halting deforestation and scaling up CO₂ removal to permanently extract hundreds of billion tonnes of carbon over the century.

The UNEP report adds that overshooting 1.5°C must not amount to surrender, but rather an urgent call for stronger leadership, reiterating that while CO₂ removal and biological restoration remain important, they cannot substitute for immediate, economy-wide emission cuts. Every fraction of a degree minimised during the overshoot phase remains essential to protecting vulnerable communities and global ecosystems from catastrophic climate impacts.

Focusing on a national level, provisional estimates published by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a 1% decrease in UK GHG emissions on a residence basis during 2025, falling from 478mn tCO₂e in 2024 to 473mn tCO₂e in 2025. This puts provisional emissions 42.4% below 1990 levels. Manufacturing recorded the largest industrial drop, falling from 64mn tCO₂e to 58mn tCO₂e over the year.

Despite overall industrial progress, household emissions registered a year-on-year increase. Consumer expenditure remained the largest single contributor to total UK emissions at 26.5%, followed closely by the transport sector at 16.4%.

Diane Crowe, Group Sustainability Director at Reconomy, an international circular economy resource management company, noted that the continuous extraction of raw materials to meet energy demand places unsustainable pressure on ecosystems, reminding the public that material extraction accounts for roughly half of global emissions. Closing this loop through enhanced recycling and resource efficiency remains central to addressing climate change, nature loss and pollution simultaneously.