WMO says the years between 2015 and 2025 have been the hottest since records began, with 2025 ranking either second or third overall.
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that there is little room for optimism about the current state of the climate. The UN agency says the years between 2015 and 2025 have been the hottest since records began, with 2025 ranking either second or third overall.
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Temperatures are rising, oceans are heating up, ice and glaciers are melting and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to increase, said WMO on Monday on World Meteorological Day.
“There is no denying that these indicators are not developing in a direction that gives cause for great hope,” said WMO Deputy Chief Ko Barrett.
The planet is being “pushed to its limits”, says UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The WMO confirms that the years 2015 to 2025 were the hottest eleven-year period since measurements began. Last year was the second or third hottest year with an average temperature of 1.43° degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850 to 1900). 2024 was hotter: at around 1.55° C.
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The Geneva-based agency, which evaluates climate science from around the world, has for the first time talked about the planet’s “energy imbalance”, which summarises indicators such as temperatures, ice melt, greenhouse gas emissions and others.
With a stable climate, energy uptake from the sun and release would balance each other out. However, human-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen to a level that the world has not experienced for at least 800,000 years. This impedes heat release.
Oceans as energy stores
More than 91% of excess energy is stored in oceans, said WMO. The warming rate of the seas has more than doubled between the periods 1960 to 2005 and 2005 to 2025. In all, 5% of excess energy is stored in soils and just over 3% goes into ice melt. Only 1% goes into the temperature rise at the Earth’s surface.
Despite these bleak statistics, certain hope remains, said WMO climate scientist Claire Ransom. If everyone thought nothing more could be done, emissions would continue to grow. “If, on the other hand, we can overcome despair (…), we can limit the extent of these drastic changes,” she declared.
The solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says WMO, by using renewable energies instead of fossil fuels, travelling more by train instead of flying, cycling more than driving and buying local products.
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Adapted from German by AI/sb
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