GENEVA: There is little room for optimism about the state of the global climate, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said in a report released on Monday, warning that key indicators continue to deteriorate, German Press Agency (dpa) reported.
The imbalance between the Earth’s energy intake and output is growing rapidly, according to the WMO report on the state of the climate in 2025.
Temperatures are rising, the oceans are heating up, ice and glaciers are melting and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise.
“There is no denying that these indicators are not moving in a direction that provides for a lot of hope,” said Ko Barrett, deputy director general of the WMO, a UN agency.
UN Secretary General António Guterres bleakly characterised the situation as an emergency. “Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits,” he said.
The WMO confirmed that the years 2015 to 2025 were the hottest 11-year period since measurements began.
Last year was the second- or third-warmest year on record with an average temperature of 1.43 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 2024 was hotter, at around 1.55 degrees.
The Paris Climate Agreement aims to limit the increase in global average temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
The WMO, which evaluates climate science from around the world, summarises indicators such as temperatures, ice melt, greenhouse gas emissions and others.
For the first time, the WMO highlighted the Earth’s energy imbalance as a key metric. In a stable climate, the energy absorbed from the sun would be balanced by the energy radiated back into space.
However, human-made greenhouse gas levels have reached concentrations not seen in at least 800,000 years, reducing the planet’s ability to release heat.
More than 91 per cent of excess energy is stored in the oceans, the WMO said. The rate of ocean warming more than doubled between the periods 1960 to 2005 and 2005 to 2025. – BERNAMA-dpa
