Last year was hot. Next year will be even hotter.

Depending on the dataset used, up to 99 percent of Europe saw higher-than-normal temperatures last year, the report found. That marked “the first time that almost the entire continent saw above-average annual temperatures,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus’ climate change service.

The findings come as the WMO and other organizations are expecting an El Niño — a naturally occurring climate pattern that tends to intensify the effects of human-caused global warming — to develop later in the year, likely driving up temperatures across the world into 2027.

“If you remember, 2024 was the warmest year on record, and that was because of El Niño,” Celeste Saulo, WMO secretary-general, told reporters Monday, while caveating that “we would like to wait until May to see whether this El Niño evolves into a stronger El Niño.”

Both the WMO and the United Kingdom’s Met Office have said they expect this El Niño to be unusually strong, sometimes dubbed a “super” El Niño. 

“Scientists are telling us that this could be the strongest El Niño event so far this century,” Grahame Madge, a Met Office spokesperson, said earlier this month.  

Each El Niño year has unique effects, intensifying rainfall or droughts in different parts of the world. But they generally push up global temperatures, with the maximum impact typically felt the following year.