Climate change

Independent, UK-   Melting glaciers, coastal areas wiped off the map and regular 40C heat in Europe. Climate experts warn the gloomy predictions of long term environmental change are no longer the future - they are already here.

Last year was the third hottest on record, with the World Meteorological Organization this week warning that 2025 continued a run of “extraordinary” global temperatures. The EU has said the Paris climate agreement of 1.5C could be broken before 2030, a decade sooner than expected.

“It is alarming because we are seeing the types of events that scientists didn’t consider would impact us in 2025 or this decade,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, tells The Independent.

“Climate change is here. We are seeing event classes [today] that were forecast in climate models for the 2050s, 2060s, and 2070s.”

Data released last month showed the world’s oceans absorbed more heat in 2025 than in any year since modern records began, according to a major international analysis.

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The start of 2025 saw the catastrophic devastation caused by the California wildfires, killing up to 440 people and inflicting unprecedented economic losses in excess of $40bn, according to Swiss Re.

.It was an above average year for hurricane activity with three category 5 hurricanes in the North Atlantic for the first time in twenty years. That includes the historic Hurricane Melissa, setting records for being one of the strongest storms in the Atlantic this century.

The slow-moving storm underwent rapid intensification due to warmer seas caused by climate change, leaving very little time for the Caribbean to respond.