As Cop30 begins, what’s the latest in climate science?

With the pace of climate change speeding up, extreme weather and other impacts are taking an increasing toll on populations and environments across the globe. Here are some of the developments this year in climate science.

Warmer, faster

Global temperatures are not just climbing, they are now climbing faster than before, with records logged for 2023 and 2024, and at points in 2025. That finding was part of a key study in June that updated baseline data used in the science reports done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27 degrees Celsius each decade, or almost 50 per cent faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.

Sea levels are rising faster now too, at about 4.5mm per year over the last decade, compared with 1.85mm per year measured across the decades since 1900.

The world is now on track to cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold around 2030, after which scientists warn we will likely trigger catastrophic, irreversible impacts.

Already, the world has warmed by 1.3-1.4 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

Tipping points

Warm-water corals are in an almost irreversible die-off from successive marine heatwaves, marking what would be the first so-called climate tipping point, when an environmental system begins to shift into a different state.