They say rising tensions between the US and Russia and the failure to tackle climate change have also added to the risk of a global cataclysm.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has announced that the minute hand on the metaphorical clock will remain at three minutes to midnight.
The clock reflects how vulnerable the world is to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies, with midnight representing apocalypse.
"Unless we change the way we think, humanity remains in serious danger," said Lawrence Krauss, chair of the bulletin's Board of Sponsors.
Mr Krauss said the Iran nuclear agreement and Paris climate accord were good news.
However, they were offset by nuclear threats and doubts that the Paris accord will lead to concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Scientists adjusted the Doomsday Clock from five minutes-to-midnight to three minutes-to-midnight last year.
They cited climate change, modernisation of nuclear weapons and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals as "extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity".
The clock was previously at three minutes to midnight in 1984, when the bulletin said talks between the US and Russia all but ceased.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons. The clock was created two years later.
The decision to move or leave it alone is made by the bulletin's science and security board, which includes physicists and environmental scientists from around the world.
They do so in consultation with the bulletin's Board of Sponsors, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates.
The closest the clock has come to midnight was two minutes to in 1953, when the Soviet Union followed the US in carrying out a hydrogen bomb test.
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