The Earth's climate is more out of balance than at any point in observed human history, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday, as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to push atmospheric and ocean temperatures to new records while ice sheets shrink further.
The findings were published in the WMO's State of the Global Climate 2025 report, released on World Meteorological Day — marked annually on March 23, this year under the theme "Observing Today, Protecting Tomorrow."
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The report confirmed that the years 2015 to 2025 were the eleven hottest years ever recorded. Within that stretch, 2025 ranked as either the second or third hottest individual year in history, sitting approximately 1.43 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average recorded between 1850 and 1900.
The consequences were felt in real time across the globe. Intense heatwaves, heavy rainfall events, and powerful tropical cyclones caused widespread disruption and devastation, the report noted, underscoring the growing vulnerability of interconnected economies and societies to climate shocks.
The world's oceans continued their role as a pressure valve for excess planetary heat — but the scale of what they are absorbing is staggering.
Over the past two decades, the ocean has taken in the equivalent of roughly 18 times humanity's total annual energy use, every single year. In 2025, ocean heat content measured to a depth of 2,000 metres reached its highest level since records began in 1960, surpassing the previous record set just a year earlier in 2024.
The oceans are also continuing to absorb carbon dioxide, a process that drives acidification and threatens marine ecosystems.
Data from individual monitoring stations confirmed that levels of all three primary greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — continued to climb in 2025, with no sign of a reversal.
In a significant addition to its methodology, the WMO included Earth's energy imbalance as a formal climate indicator for the first time in this year's report.
The metric measures the rate at which energy enters versus leaves the Earth system — essentially, how much heat the planet is trapping. That imbalance has been growing since its observational record began in 1960, with the rate of increase accelerating sharply over the past two decades.
In 2025, Earth's energy imbalance reached a new all-time high.
The cumulative picture painted by the report is one of a climate system under sustained and intensifying stress — with the indicators that scientists watch most closely all moving in the wrong direction at once.