Mediterranean Among Fastest-Warming Regions as UN Issues New Climate Warning

Average global temperatures are set to exceed preindustrial levels by more than 1.5°C, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

“We climate procrastinated, and accordingly we are saying this window has closed, but we can open it again,” Inger Andersen, UNEP’s executive director, told the Financial Times. “This is the only way we can get back to a semblance of a reality that is still largely manageable.”

UNEP warned that rising emissions and current government policies have put the world on course for 2.8°C of global warming this century, far exceeding the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping temperature increases well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit them to 1.5°C.

The UN agency cited rising emissions in the United States, China and Indonesia. In the U.S., higher electricity demand and a rebound in coal-fired power generation drove the largest absolute increase in greenhouse gas emissions among major emitters in 2025.

However, UNEP outlined a pathway in which global temperatures would peak between 1.7°C and 1.8°C above preindustrial levels around the middle of the century before returning to 1.5°C or lower by 2100.

Achieving this would require drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, including 18 percent by 2030, 45 percent by 2035, and 69 percent by 2040, all relative to 2025 levels.

“Overshoot is not surrender. We can still keep it as small and as short as possible – and bring temperatures back below 1.5°C by the end of the century,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.

Returning to the 1.5°C target would also require removing and permanently storing about 320 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the century, equivalent to roughly eight years of global carbon dioxide emissions at 2024 levels.

Separate research published in the scientific journal Pure and Applied Geophysics in May 2026 found that the Mediterranean basin, responsible for roughly 95 percent of global olive oil production, is warming more quickly than the global average.

Analyzing temperature data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, part of the European Union’s Earth observation program, researchers identified statistically significant warming in mean monthly, seasonal and annual temperatures across nearly the entire Mediterranean region.

February, September and November were the only months in which substantial portions of the region, ranging from 11 to 25 percent, did not exhibit statistically significant warming trends.

“The most pronounced warming occurs over the Balkan Peninsula, Turkey, inland Spain, and northwestern Africa,” the researchers wrote.

These areas include some of the world’s most important olive oil-producing regions. According to the International Olive Council, global olive oil production reached approximately 3.57 million metric tons in the 2024/25 crop year, with Spain alone accounting for about 1.42 million tons.

“Comparative analysis with 11 larger-scale regions indicates that the Mediterranean ranks among the fastest-warming regions worldwide,” the researchers added. “Relative to the mid-twentieth century baseline, current mean annual temperatures are approximately 1.4°C to 1.5°C higher in the Mediterranean and Europe.”