All IPCC AR6 regions are close to their 1.5 °C- and 2 °C-equivalent warming limits

Global temperatures have averaged 1.2 °C above pre-industrial levels over the past decade, yet regional warming patterns and remaining warming budgets under Paris Agreement limits remain uncertain owing to insufficient historical observations. Here we quantify and attribute warming across all IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) regions since pre-industrial times using a Bayesian framework combining multi-model simulations with observations, enabling robust estimates in data-sparse regions. Regional warming is already pronounced. By 2025, attributed regional warming had reached about 90–94% of the levels expected at 1.5 °C global warming and 65–76% of those expected at 2 °C. Attribution confidence is the highest in tropical regions, including much of Africa, where low internal variability enables robust results. Attributed warming is the greatest in northern high-latitude regions, exceeding 2.5 °C. Greenhouse gases dominate, partially offset by aerosol cooling. These results reveal that current warming is already indistinguishable from a 1.5 °C world, highlighting the shared urgency of adaptation across all regions. Climate targets are set for global temperatures, but what they mean regionally is less clear. Here the authors quantify the amount of human-induced warming in individual IPCC regions and find that, by 2025, they had reached 90–94% (65–76%) of their expected warming levels at the 1.5 °C (2 °C) global warming thresholds.