2026 in climate change

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This article documents notable events, research findings, scientific and technological advances, and human actions to measure, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of global warming and climate change—during the year 2026.

Summaries

Measurements and statistics

  • "Vital Signs of the Planet" as presented by NASA at the end of 2025 / beginning of 2026
    "Vital Signs of the Planet" as presented by NASA at the end of 2025 / beginning of 2026[1]
Non-linear growth in the global warming effect of accumulating long-lived greenhouse gases contributed to economic damage over a 60-year period estimated to be over five times as large as that of a 30-year period (shown in chart). A Nature article estimated future damages from past emissions to be at least an order of magnitude larger than historical damages from the same emissions.[2]
  • 9 January: a report published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences said that ocean heat content in 2025 had reached a new record for nine consecutive years.[3]
  • 9 January (reported): an Oxfam report concluded that the richest 1% exhausted their annual carbon budget in ten days.[4] (Carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted while keeping the planet within 1.5 °C of global warming.)
  • 22 January: Ember's European Electricity Review 2026 reported that in 2025, wind and solar energy provided 30% of EU electricity, surpassing fossil power (29%) for the first time, and generating more power than fossil sources in 14 of 27 EU countries.[5]
  • 4 February: a study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science estimated that a 1 °C (1.8 °F) increase in summer temperature causes up to three additional weeks of Alaskan glacier melt.[6]
  • 6 March: a study published in Geophysical Research Letters removed estimated influence of three natural variability factors and concluded with over 98% confidence that global warming from 2015 to 2025 accelerated more than during any previous decade.[7]
  • 6 March: a study published in Science Advances concluded that compound drought-heatwave events (CDHEs) have increased nearly eightfold since the early 2000s, from 1.6 to 13.1% per degree Celsius, with considerable regional variation.[8]
  • 10 March: a study published in Environmental Research: Health reported extensive statistics on present and projected worsening of heat- and humidity-related livability limitations.[9]
  • 25 March: a study published in Nature estimated that, from 1990 through 2020, carbon dioxide emissions in the US caused $10.2 trillion in cumulative damages by 2020, with about 30% occurring within the US itself.[10] Damages from China were estimated at $8.7 trillion, and from the EU, $6.42 trillion.[10] The researchers said that future damages from past emissions are at least an order of magnitude larger than historical damages from the same emissions.[10]
  • 17 April: based on climate-driven weakening of day-night weather constraints, a study published in Science Advances estimated that from 1975 to 2024, annual potential burning hours for wildfires in North America rose 36%.[11]
  • 21 April: Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026 said that, in 2025, clean power growth exceeded the rise in overall global electricity demand (fossil fuel generation declining), and that renewables overtook coal power.[12]
  • 12 May: a study published in Environmental Research Letters considered life-cycle emissions of electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and (acknowledging the variability of driving behaviors, climatic conditions, prices, fees, etc.) estimated that in the US battery electric vehicles (BEVs) save 40%–60% of emissions compared to ICEVs.[13]
  • 13 May: a study of "compound events" (example: droughts combined with extreme heat) published in Nature concluded that rare and severe events escalate disproportionately with increasing CO2 emissions.[14] Accordingly, when compound events are considered, emission levels that are considered allowable are substantially lower than when conventional Earth system models are used.[14]
  • 13 May: a study published in Nature Health concluded that adoption in China of electric vehicles led to a reduction in airborne pollutants that prevented about 262,000 non-accidental deaths and 75,000 all-cause deaths.[15]
  • 15 May: a study published in Nature Sustainability analyzed how coal plants' aerosol pollution reduces energy photovoltaic (PV) energy production, including a 5.8% reduction in 2023, and losses from 2017 to 2023 equivalent to a third of energy added by new PV sources.[16]
  • 9 June: a study published in GeoHealth forecast that, under a low emissions scenario, 31.5K-231K US heat-related illnesses in 2012 would increase to 137K-314K by 2040. Under a high emissions scenario, the model predicted 42.5K-246K US illnesses in 2012 would increase to 156K-337K by 2040.[17]
  • 10 June:
— applying extreme event attribution, a study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that since 1900, the median frequency 1-in-100-year extreme coastal flooding events has increased ~12-fold, with human-driven radiative forcing alone quadrupling their likelihood.[18]
— applying extreme event attribution, a study published in Science Advances concluded that human-caused climate change is responsible for ~58% of the daily extreme water level extremes over 2000–2018, and that human-caused sea level rise has caused a near-tripling of days with such extremes since the 1970s.[19]
  • 16 June: the United Nations Children’s Fund's Children’s Climate Risk Report 2026 estimated that almost all children are now exposed to at least one of the following climate hazards: riverine floods (337M, "M"=million), coastal floods (33M), droughts (1.8B, "B"=billion), tropical storms (662M), heatwaves (1.5B), extreme heat (1.2B), fires (206M), and sand/dust storms (123M).[20]
  • June: Energy Institute's 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy said that renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels; excluding hydro, nuclear) were the largest source of energy supply growth (+3.3 EJ; EJ=1018 joules) for the first time outside of a recession (outpacing oil (2.5 EJ), gas (2.4 EJ) and coal (1.1 EJ)).[21]

Natural events and phenomena

  • 4 February: a study published in Science Advances concluded that wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was responsible for ~24,100 all-cause deaths per year in the contiguous United States.[22]
  • 12 February: a study published in Nature Geoscience estimated that the contribution associated with a La Niña-to-El Niño transition explains about 75% of the 2022-2023 extreme increase in Earth's energy uptake, contributing to the record global surface temperatures and widespread climate extremes observed in 2023–2024.[23]
  • 25 February: a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution stated that long-term global warming was associated with an annual fish biomass decline of up to 19.8% between 1993 and 2021 in major Northern Hemisphere basins.[24]
  • 25 February: a study published in PLOS One reported that between 1794 and 2024, there was an average absolute shift in flowering of tropical plants of 2.04 days per decade (range: 0.037–14.10), comparable to changes seen in temperate, boreal and alpine desert plants, and severe enough to cause interspecific misalignment between pollinators and seed dispersers.[25]
  • 9 March: a study published in Atmospheric Science Letters estimated that, in the 3 May 2025 hailstorm in Western Europe, a 30% increase in probability of larger hail stones and a  2 cm (0.79 in) increase in hailstone size could be attributed to climate change.[26]
  • 10 March: a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research considered continental-ocean mass redistribution due to melting of polar ice sheets and global glaciers and changes in Earth's hydrology, and said that 21st century climate change may be increasing the length of Earth's days at a rate among the highest in 3.6 million years.[27]
  • March: the World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate 2025 introduced a new indicator of the Earth's energy balance and concluded that Earth's energy budget is more out of balance than at any previous time in the observational record.[28]
  • 25 March: a study published in Nature concluded that extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate (2 °C) global warming.[29]
  • 26 March: a study published in Nature Communications concluded that environmental heat stress thresholds may be cooler and drier than previously thought, more specifically, that "non-survivable conditions" are occurring during present-day heat events that are below the six-hour 35 °C wet-bulb temperature threshold that currently defines such conditions.[30]
  • 8 April: a study published in Science Advances concluded that over the past 20 years, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) has weakened at four different latitudes along the western boundary of the North Atlantic Ocean, that boundary thought to constitute the "canary in a coal mine" for the tendency of the AMOC as a whole.[31]
  • 10 April: NOAA's "Final La Niña Advisory" concluded that La Niña conditions had transitioned to ENSO-neutral, which was expected to persist through Northern Hemisphere summer.[32]
  • 15 April: a study published in Science Advances estimated a slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) of 51±8%—a weakening ~60% stronger than suggested by multimodel mean estimates.[33]
  • 16 April (reported): an editorial published in Nature noted that, in 2025, mosquitos were found in Iceland for the first time, and were said to be "a warning that the Arctic lacks a system for monitoring arthropods and anticipating biological risks before they escalate".[34]
  • 4 May: a study published in Nature Climate Change estimated that airborne microplastics and nanoplastics add direct radiative forcing of ~1.34 W/m2, exceeding that of black carbon by a factor of 4.7.[35]
  • 6 May: a study published in Science concluded that, on 10 August 2025, climate change had "preconditioned" a >64 million cubic meter landslide in Alaska's Tracy Arm fjord that caused a 481-meter run-up megatsunami after an initial 100-meter high breaking wave traveling at over 70 metres per second (160 mph).[36]
  • 8 May: a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluded that, even under gradual environmental change, eco-evolutionary feedback can create a tipping point beyond which adaptation fails, as genetic drift overwhelms selection and species' ranges contract from the margins or fragment abruptly.[37]
  • 8 May: a study published in Science Advances applied a sea ice-ocean model identifying three distinct phases of Antarctic sea ice retreat, and suggested that "persistent upwelling-favorable conditions under anthropogenic forcing may push the Southern Ocean into a prolonged low sea ice state".[38]
  • 11 May: a study published in Nature Geoscience concluded that stratospheric cooling atop a warming troposphere is the result of the spectroscopy of carbon dioxide and not a result of increasing optical thickness.[39]
  • 19 May: a study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that warm-blooded seabirds—unable to adjust their body temperature to ambient temperature—must reduce their geographic range in response to global warming, forcing them to disperse over longer distances.[40]
  • 20 May: a study published in Science Advances estimated that the factors driving sea level rise since 1960 are 43% from thermal ocean expansion, 27% from glacier melting, 15% from Greenland, 12% from Antarctica, and 3% from land water storage.[41]
  • 27 May: a study published in Nature forecast a 36.5–42.1% increase in global hailstorm-induced damage potential by 2100, with the magnitude determined by the emission scenario.[42]
  • 28 May: a study published in Geophysical Research Letters concluded that the cooling observed in the "cold blob" south of Greenland and Iceland is due to changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (ocean heat transport), and not because of variations in ocean surface heat loss.[43]
  • 11 June: a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration notice stated that "El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27".[44]
  • 12 June: a study published in Science Advances concluded that coupling between photosynthesis and woody biomass growth (wood acting as a carbon sink) has been overestimated, so that current earth system models may be overestimating long-term carbon sequestration in forests.[45]
  • 12 June: considering "deep carbon"— at least 3 metres (9.8 ft) deep—in permafrost thaw, a study published in Science Advances concluded that in high-emission scenarios, northern soil carbon balance's reversal from carbon sink to carbon source should be advanced from what is predicted by existing Earth system models.[46]
  • 17 June: a study of UK floods and droughts published in Earth's Future (American Geophysical Union) concluded that increased global warming will increase "hydrodynamic whiplash" (sudden shifts between wet and dry conditions), which might cause a drought to make land less able to subsequently absorb intense rain.[47]

Actions, and goal statements

Science and technology

  • January (reported): a Chinese company launched the first megawatt-level airborne wind turbine—a 60x40x40 m (197x131x131 ft) helium-filled aerostat—providing electricity through a tether cable from 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) above the ground.[48]
  • 14 January: at Concordia Station, Antarctica, the Ice Memory Foundation inaugurated a global repository of mountain ice cores, to ensure that future generations will be able to study past climate conditions.[49]
  • 15 January: a study published in Nature Climate Change estimated the 2020 ocean-based social cost of carbon (SCC) to be almost double that of prior SCC estimates that didn't consider ocean-related impacts.[50]
  • 12 February: anomalous increases in tropical sea surface temperatures have caused NOAA to revise the threshold distinguishing La Niña and El Niño (ENSO) events from each other.[51] The new method replaces a dependency on a 30-year climate base period with the Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI): a comparison of the ENSO region to the global tropics.[51]
  • 4 March: a study published in Nature concluded that sea level measurements that have been based on geoid models rather than actual sea level measurements have underestimated the degree of sea level rise.[52]
  • 24 April: a study published in Science Advances concluded that artificial closure of the Bering Strait can extend the safe carbon budget of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), provided that the AMOC is strong enough at the time of closure.[53]

Political, economic, legal, and cultural actions

Threat to global stability and prosperity

     Let's tell it like it is: The world's addiction to fossil fuels is one of the greatest threats to global stability and prosperity. Three fourths of humanity lives in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels; dependent on energy they do not control at prices they cannot predict; watching development budgets siphoned into fuel bills; at the constant mercy of geopolitical turmoil and supply disruptions.

— UN Secretary General António Guterres
18 January 2026[54]
'Suicidal' model of capitalism

     There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death. Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life. The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.

Mitigation goal statements

  • 7 April: Global Energy Outlook 2026: How the World Lost the Goal of 1.5°C, published by Resources for the Future, concluded that achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 °C is no longer plausible, and that limiting the rise to 2 °C will be "extremely challenging" and "requires additional policy effort".[78]
  • 2 June: the government of Great Britain set a target to cut emissions ‌by about 87% by 2040 from 1990 levels, the Climate Change Committee recommending more renewable energy and less meat consumption.[79]

Adaptation goal statements

Consensus

Projections

  • 28 January: a study published in Nature forecast that climate change could lead to 123 million additional malaria cases and 532,000 additional deaths in Africa between 2024 and 2050 under current malaria control levels.[82] Extreme weather events are thought to cause 79% of additional cases and 93% of additional deaths.[82]
  • 7 April: a study published in Geoscientific Model Development concluded that emissions associated with RCP8.5—the most extreme future emissions scenario—"have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends".[83][84]
  • 6 May: a study published in Nature projected that global warming of 1.5–1.9 °C (2.7–3.4 °F) and deforestation of 22–28% would cause 62−77% of the Amazon rainforest to transition to grassland.[85]
  • 7 May: a study described in Science forecast that 7-16% of 60,000 plant species will be at high extinction risk by 2100.[86] Another 7 May Science article published similar findings.[87]
  • 28 May: the World Meteorological Organization forecast that the average global surface temperature for each year from 2026 through 2030 will be between 1.3–1.9 °C (2.3–3.4 °F) higher than the pre-industrial baseline, and that there is a 75% chance that the five-year average will be more than 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above baseline.[88]

Significant publications

See also

References

External links

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