Hello and welcome back to our weekly climate newsletter, and the first edition of 2026.

The new year begins with a stark warning. Scientists have confirmed that 2025 was one of the three hottest years on record, bringing the planet very close to breaching a critical threshold. 

For the first time, the three-year average temperature has now surpassed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – a key threshold set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

WWA scientists identified 157 extreme weather events as most severe in 2025, meaning they met criteria such as causing more than 100 deaths, affecting more than half an area's population or having a state of emergency declared. Of those, they closely analysed 22.

That included dangerous heatwaves, which the WWA said were the world's deadliest extreme weather events in 2025. The researchers said some of the heatwaves they studied in 2025 were 10 times more likely than they would have been a decade ago due to climate change.

In the UK, the unprecedented conditions saw some services record their highest number of incidents for the spring period since comparable data began. England's fire services battled almost 27,000 grassland, woodland, and crop fires during the UK's warmest spring and summer on record.

Another report showed climate disasters cost the world more than $120bn (£95bn) in 2025. However, the true toll is expected to be far higher as the deadliest events in poorer countries were largely uninsured and undercounted.

In the United States, wildfires in California caused more than $60bn (£47bn) in damage and were linked to more than 400 deaths, making them the single costliest disaster of the year. Asia, however, dominated the list overall.

Cyclones and flooding across south and south-east Asia in November caused an estimated $25bn (£20bn) in damage and killed more than 1,750 people across Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Malaysia.

"These disasters are not 'natural' – they are the inevitable result of continued fossil fuel expansion and political delay," said Joanna Haigh, emeritus professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London.

"While the costs run into the billions, the heaviest burden falls on communities with the least resources to recover."

Read more

People traverse a flooded street in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Oct. 15, 2025, after torrential rain

Iceland records hottest Christmas Eve on record as temperatures near 20C

By Stuti Mishra

Nepal to scrap Everest waste deposit scheme after years of mounting rubbish

By Stuti Mishra

Extreme floods caused by melting glaciers likely to cause more deaths – research

By Sarah Ward

Stuti's must reads

Climate policies that push people to change how they live, such as eating less meat, banning cars from city centres or cutting air travel, may weaken public support for climate action, according to a new study.

Research published in Nature Sustainability suggests that some policies aimed at changing personal behaviour can backfire if people feel they are being forced to comply. Instead of strengthening environmental commitment, such measures may erode people's underlying "green" values and reduce support for other climate policies.

Read more

The global seafood trade is spreading exposure to "forever chemicals" far beyond where the pollution occurs, with fish carrying synthetic substances from contaminated waters to consumers around the world, a new study has found.

The study looked at levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in more than 200 marine fish species that make up almost all global commercial fish production and found that international trade shifted the exposure of these chemicals from highly contaminated regions to countries where local fish contained lower levels of pollution.

Europe, in particular, emerged as a major hub in these exposure flows, despite not having the most contaminated fish stocks.

Read more

CLIMATE IN NUMBERS

$120bn

The amount climate disasters cost the world in 2025.

Read more

The Independent has launched a project to investigate the impact of foreign aid cuts on the developing world. The project receives funding from the Gates Foundation. All of the journalism is editorially independent.

FEATURED

Sierra Leone almost entirely axed from UK aid budget: 'Lives of mothers and babies are at stake'

By Rachel Schraer

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