Five points – this is what the climate year 2026 could bring

Jonathan Jeppsson

Civil engineer and climate columnist

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Published 10.06

 

Devastating fires raged in California in December 2024 and January 2025. Photo: Eric Thayer/AP

The climate year 2026 could be more dramatic than we imagine.

Several crucial shifts, both positive and negative, could become reality.

Here are five points about what could happen.

1. El Niño returns

There is now increasing evidence that the climate phenomenon El Niño, when the surface water in a band of the Pacific Ocean warms up sharply, will return in the fall of 2026. Although forecasts indicate that it will not be the most powerful, it is undeniable that all new heat records will be set during an El Niño year. And it should be remembered that forecasts tend to underestimate the strength of the phenomenon.

 

El Niño conditions with very warm surface water in the Pacific Ocean.

2. Temperatures reach over 1.4 degrees

The running average for the last three-year period is now 1.52 degrees above pre-industrial times. 2025 will be one of the three warmest years on record and 2026 seems to continue at the same level – it seems that a new normal has established itself. According to The Met Office's estimate, 2026 will end at 1.46 degrees. This is another clear sign that warming has accelerated in recent years. According to the World Meteorological Organization, there is a high probability that at least one of the years between 2025 and 2029 will break the current record for the warmest year.

 

We are heading towards new heat records. Photo: Getty Images

3. Will the Doomsday Glacier collapse?

It attracted a lot of attention when a report from 2021 concluded that the ice shelf at Thwaites in Antarctica, the so-called "Doomsday Glacier",  would collapse within five years. In 2026, the five years have passed and the question is - is a collapse in sight? Thwaites holds enormous amounts of ice, enough to raise sea levels by more than half a meter on its own. It also acts as a plug in West Antarctica, which once it is gone could allow more glaciers to – in the very long term – collapse into the sea.

          
          The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica holds back enormous amounts of ice. Photo: AP

Because of the slope of the bedrock beneath the glacier, where it gets deeper further inland than towards the sea, it has been feared that the glacier could quickly break apart under its own weight if the protective ice shelf cracks. At the same time, warm seawater has flowed in under the glacier and hollowed out the base of the ice. But new reports have nuanced the picture – the glacier does not seem to be as vulnerable to immediate collapse as previously thought. A rapid course does not seem likely for the time being, but the overall picture of the scientists is not much to cheer about.

“We are not saying that we are safe,” Mathieu Morlighem, a professor of geosciences at Dartmouth College and the one who led the study, told the New York Times. “The Antarctic ice sheet will disappear; this will happen. The question is how quickly.” 

 

Most indications are that the world will miss the goals of staying below 1.5 or 2 degrees of warming. Photo: Czarek Sokolowski/AP

4. Global emissions may peak

It is the news that the whole world has been waiting for for decades – that global emissions will peak and start to decline. There is some evidence that this will happen in 2026. China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has already reached a plateau, five years ahead of the set goals, due to a completely senseless expansion of solar and wind power. Reputable energy consulting firm Rystad Energi believes that we will reach the peak globally in 2026 and that the vigorous expansion of so-called renewables will continue. However, it is believed that emissions will remain high and will decrease too slowly to meet the 1.5-degree target.

5. The great silence is spreading

Since 2022, media coverage of the climate issue has declined. The major American television stations are paying less and less attention to climate-related events. 

The scope of the climate issue and the fact that it is now clear that in our goal-driven culture we are missing the crucial goals of the Paris Agreement may mean that conversations are increasingly silent – ​​if you can’t talk about it, you must keep quiet. There is also a “meta-silence”, where we don’t talk about the fact that we don’t talk about it, writes George Marshall in his book on climate psychology; ”Don’t even think about it”. He describes how there is a lack of a social mechanism to communicate about climate anxiety, that people are forced to manage their hopes and fears for themselves, with no other encouragement than different consumer choices.

 

Photo: Thomas B Lee / Getty Images

A major German study shows how clearly climate anxiety can be linked to social isolation – higher levels of loneliness and isolation were significantly associated with higher levels of climate anxiety in the overall population. At the same time, 89 percent of people in the world want their governments to do more to combat global warming, more than two-thirds are prepared to give up one percent of their income to combat the climate crisis. Surprisingly, they thought that only a minority of other people – 43 percent – ​​would be willing to do the same.

That this large silent majority is not taken seriously is one of the things that should not happen in 2026. But the risk is high that it will.