The UK Met Office says that 2016 will be the hottest year globally since records began.
The forecast arrives just five days after 195 nations across the globe agreed an historic deal to fight global warming, but that and the peak of the El Niño weather phenomenon mean that a new record will be set for the third year in a row.
A deal agreed at a UN summit in Paris will look to keep the rise of world temperatures below 2C, with the aim to keep it as low as 1.5C.
According to The Guardian, there is just a 5% chance that temperatures in 2016 will be lower than those in 2015, marking the third year in succession that a new record will have been set.
“The vast majority of the warming is global warming, but the icing on the cake is the big El Niño event,” said Professor Adam Scaife, the head of monthly to decadal prediction at the Met Office.
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