Last year broke heat records across the world – is 2025 destined to be more of the same?

It will perhaps come as no surprise that 2024 will be crowned the hottest year on record. Marked by a cascade of devastating weather events, missed climate goals and the ravenous consumption of fossil fuels that broke records in its own right, the world continued its grim march up the thermometer, toppling the title claimed … the year before.

But last year’s climbing temperatures also crossed a key threshold, surpassing 1.5C over preindustrial levels for the first time. Dr Nick Dunstone of the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service, called the breach a “sobering milestone in climate history”.

And yet, no alarm bells bellowed. This “sobering milestone” was met with little more than a murmur from policymakers around the world, who have fallen far behind the targets set to stop global heating from exceeding this level. The world is on track to hit an estimated 2.7C of warming according to scientists at the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent project that tracks and measures government action – and it could go higher. Climate researchers told my colleague Oliver Milman in November that hopes to stop the world from reaching those 1.5C averages are “deader than a doornail”.

What reasons are there to hope for more progress in 2025? More on that after this week’s most important reads.

It’s important to be clear: the consequences of inaction are already hitting home.

More than 1,000 people perished in the flash floods that tore through Afghanistan and Pakistan last spring. Wildfires consumed an astonishing 46 million hectares (113 million acres) in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, Pantanal wetlands and Cerrado biomes. Extreme heat killed at least 125 people in Mexico and took a devastating toll on the 1.7 million displaced by Israel’s war in Gaza. Roughly a quarter of the global population grappled with at least 30 days of dangerous heat this year, while the planet hit its hottest day on record in July.

In 2024, there were 24 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters from January to November 2024 – a total second only to the 28 annual disasters experienced in 2023. Among them, the US logged one of its deadliest hurricanes as the furious storm Helene roared across the south-east and swept through Appalachian mountain towns.

“It’s much more common now to see these extreme events not just occurring one at a time but overlapping,” said Jonathan Sury, a senior staff associate at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Often, these events are triggered one after the other, creating compounding or cascading hazards. “It is extremely taxing on emergency management, it is extremely taxing on first responders, and it is also taxing on communities that are most directly affected,” he added.

Conditions in the past year were fuelled by the climate crisis but also affected by a warmer shift in surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific, a pattern known as El Niño. This helped tip the scales, bringing the already climbing temperatures to a boil.

That means there’s at least some hope that 2025 will be cooler, according to Prof Adam Scaife, who led the team of scientists that produced the Met Office’s global forecast for the year.

It won’t be enough to slow the upward trajectory of heating, which is markedly exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels. 2025 temperatures are expected to outpace those of El Niño years logged in the past decade; and, with a forecast between 1.29C and 1.53C, this year is likely to fall in line behind 2024 and 2023 as one of the hottest years recorded.

With the election of Donald Trump, a climate denier and extraction-industry evangelist, to lead the US – already ranked as the world’s second-largest emitter – prospects for reining in consumption are bleak.

We are kicking off 2025 with good odds for more crises as the impact from heating continues to unfold. But there’s also still time – and much that can be done to both prevent and prepare for what lies ahead.

If you still have blank spaces on your new year resolution list, look to your community to see where you can play a part. Resiliency starts at the local level. Reaching out to a neighbor in need now so you can act quickly during a crisis could be key. Packing a go-bag, studying the possible dangers that lurk nearby, and bolstering homes all go a long way to curb the hurt caused by weather catastrophes, according to disaster experts.

“We know heat is coming and will get worse,” said Sury. “Some parts of that we can’t stop but there are ways we can adapt our communities and livelihoods to better manage ourselves and our resources during future disasters.”

Read more:

The good news

The bad news

Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers

After years of drought conditions saw his water use rise, Californian professor and former Peace Corps member Eric Haas had a radical solution. In this first-person piece for the Guardian, Haas explains how he came upon the idea of installing a water collection system to save up all his rainwater and greywater – and how it has radically transformed his home.

“I have about 4,000 gallons of water I can collect, which translates to about 7in of rain coming off the roof. Filtered rainwater is used to fill the toilets and washing machine and water most of our plants. It can also be saved on site for emergency use in case of a fire or an earthquake,” says Haas.

“I feel like I’m doing something real and concrete, and every time I hear the greywater pump go on or when I hear the pump from our rainwater system fill up the washing machine or toilet, that’s water that I’m not taking from the system, and that matters,” he adds.

“It brings me joy to interact with the natural environment in this small way in my urban house.”

If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downtoearth@theguardian.com

Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines

Carbon sequestration is the capture, removal and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help reduce climate change. This can be done using natural methods, such as planting trees or restoring wetlands, which absorb CO2; or through technological methods, such as capturing CO2 from industry and storing it underground.

For more Guardian coverage of carbon sequestration, click here

One image that sums up the week in environmental news

Credit: Laurel Smith/Zuma Press

A rare surfing event, the Eddie, took place in Hawaii last week, thanks to some giant waves. Formed about a week ago in the north Pacific Ocean, the waves emerged as a low-pressure system produced an exceptionally large swell. They went on to hit Hawaii, enabling the Eddie to take place for just the 11th time in its 40-year history.

For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here