Resources · Issue 01
The first three years above 1.5°C
2024 was the hottest year in the instrumental record. 2023–2025, taken together, were the first stretch to average more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
- ERA5 vs 1850–1900
- Paris 1.5°C
- 2025 vs 1850–1900 (Copernicus ERA5)
- 1.47°C
- 2024, the hottest year
- 1.60°C
- Long-term warming, C3S
- 1.4°C
- Warmest years on record: 2015–2025
- 11
A threshold that was supposed to be a climate, not a weather year
Copernicus’s ERA5 reanalysis puts 2025 at 1.47°C above 1850–1900, a hair cooler than 2023 and 0.13°C below 2024, which remains the hottest year in the instrumental record. NASA’s GISTEMP, on a 1951–1980 baseline, says the same in different units: 2025 at 1.19°C, cooler than 2024, tied with 2023 within error. The sentence that matters is the three-year one. 2023–2025 averaged more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial — the first such stretch since the thermometers began. That is not yet a breach of the Paris Agreement, which is written on long-term climate. It is the first time the weather has spent three years on the wrong side of the line the Agreement named.
Eleven of eleven
2015 through 2025 are the eleven warmest years on record, in every major dataset Copernicus compiled. El Niño helps explain 2023–24; it does not explain a decade. C3S’s own estimate of the underlying warming is about 1.4°C, rising at 0.27°C per decade over 1996–2025. On that slope the long-term 1.5°C climate arrives before 2030 — more than a decade earlier than the rate implied when Paris was signed.
What a number does, and does not, price
A 1.5°C print does not, by itself, move a cash-flow. What moves cash-flows is the physical and political weather around it: insurance withdrawal from coasts, heat that takes outdoor labour offline, drought that takes hydro offline, and a permitting fight that either builds the grid in The century-long reign of coal is ending or does not. Pair this chart with batteries and EVs. The atmosphere is the constraint; the capital stock is the response. They are not the same speed.
Investing lens
Horizon 10–30 years · Educational, not advice
Treat 1.5°C as a clock on physical risk and on the durability of transition capex, not as a single trade. The investable surface is adaptation (grids, storage, water, insurance-adjacent) and the remaining carbon-price and standard-driven buildout.
Where the map points
- Grid, storage and interconnection — the same names as the electric-century theme
- Water, heat-resilient infrastructure, and reinsurers that still have a balance sheet
- Avoid a pure ‘climate ETF’ that is just a rebadged growth book
What can break it
- Natural variability that produces a cooler run of years and a political pause
- Adaptation that is real but uninvestable (public works with no equity claim)
- A policy backlash that treats 1.5°C as a slogan to defund
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01PrimaryCopernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF2026-01-14Copernicus: 2025 was the third hottest year on record
ERA5: 2025 1.47°C above 1850–1900; 2024 1.60°C (hottest); 2023–2025 average exceeded 1.5°C for the first time.
- 02PrimaryCopernicus Climate Change Service2026-04Climate indicators: Temperature
ERA5 annual anomalies vs 1991–2020. Long-term warming ~1.4°C. Offset to 1850–1900 is 0.88°C.
- 03CorroboratedNASA GISS2026-01Global Temperature — Earth Indicator
2025 1.19°C above 1951–1980; 2024 remains the hottest year in the NASA record.
Keep reading
The century-long reign of coal is ending
In 2025, renewable electricity generated more power than coal for the first time in the modern era. Solar did most of the work.
33.8%
Renewables share of world electricity, 2025
Batteries now outbuild the gas turbine
The world added 108 GW of batteries in 2025 — more new capacity than gas plants managed in their best year. China installed most of it.
108 GW
Battery storage added in 2025
One in four new cars is now electric
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