For more than 30 years, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization has warned us about worsening global climate change. Its annual “Climate Status” report is a compendium of facts and figures about climate developments, collected over the previous 365 days. It is an authoritative look at the state of our global climate and its increasingly precarious condition.
And I, as a journalist specializing in the environment, almost never write a line on the subject.
This year’s edition, referring to 2025, is published today.
The conclusions are stark, even frightening. But, as happens every year, they also sound a bit like repetition. Before moving on to the next story, I tend to think, “What exactly is new here.”
I’m not the only one dismissing this particular release. Media coverage of previous editions of the “State of the Climate” and similar documents has already demonstrated that readers have little interest in news about yet another UN report with warnings of impending doom.
The fact that the last 11 years have been the hottest on record? How boring. The announcement that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached levels unprecedented in the entire history of humanity? Wake me up when there’s news. Are the oceans warming at a rate never seen before? But we already knew that, right?
The findings should be shocking reminders that the planet’s vital signs are in the red. However, similar observations were made last year and the year before that.
Yet the simple fact that these reports seem too routine to warrant news coverage is testament to how quickly climate change has advanced, even if only in the last decade. Unfortunately, we have built up a certain immunity to bad climate news.
While individual data may have already been reported, this edition contains more detailed and disturbing information about the climate than any in the past. If it were an audiobook, it would be filled with screams instead of words, with the narrator overwhelmed by the urgency of the information conveyed.
This realization led me to take the (for me, unusual) step of sharing the conclusions of this launch with you. Furthermore, this year’s compendium includes some data that were not in previous editions (unprecedented information that helps explain the acceleration in the rate of global warming in recent years).
One of the sections of the document details Earth’s energy imbalance: the amount of solar energy that the atmosphere lets in compared to that which escapes back into space. Any extra energy trapped in the atmosphere or oceans acts as a heating agent.
For our planet’s climate to maintain a stable global average temperature, this equation must be balanced.
However, the report concluded that, in 2025, the imbalance was greater than anything that has been observed in the 65 years of recording this data. The disparity has increased over the last two decades, now culminating in this new maximum.
WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo warned in a statement that “human activities are increasingly disturbing the natural balance and we will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years.”
Interestingly, the paper notes that only a small portion of the excess heat contributes to the warming of the atmosphere. More than 91% of excess heat is being stored in the oceans, where temperatures reached a record high last year. This excess is also warming and melting the polar ice caps, raising sea levels around the world.
Record levels of greenhouse gases in the air also explain why so many extreme events, from heat waves to floods, now occur with greater regularity and severity.
In the end, the report on the “Climate Status” may not be news per se, but it is still fundamental. It’s a document I’ll return to throughout the year as a point of reference, while remaining firm in my belief not to devalue next year’s edition when it arrives in my email inbox.
