Hurricane Melissa’s $60 billion path of destruction through the Caribbean. Cyclones in Mozambique. Typhoons in the Philippines. Floods in Nigeria, the United States, India and Viet Nam. Wildfires in California and Korea. Heatwaves from Europe to East Asia.

These are some of the extreme weather events captured by the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) State of Global Climate Report for 2025 – a grim read as the globe reels from the cumulative effect of 11 of the hottest years ever recorded.

“Extreme events, including intense heat, heavy rainfall and tropical cyclones, created challenges for virtually every continent, and are a key way that societies are experiencing a changing climate,” Ko Barrett, WMO Deputy Secretary-General, said at the launch of the report.

“Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a recorded message at the launch.

“The Earth’s energy imbalance, the gap between heat absorbed and heat released, is the highest on record. In other words, our planet is trapping heat faster than it can shed it,” Guterres warned.

“Greenhouse gas concentrations are higher than at any point in hundreds of thousands of years. Global temperatures continue to rise, and humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. 

“Oceans are absorbing epic levels of heat, fuelling ever stronger storms. Glaciers and sea ice are vanishing and sea levels are relentlessly rising.”

Guterres added that these findings are not confined to charts and graphs: “They are written into the daily lives of people in families struggling as droughts and storms drive up food prices. 

“In workers pushed to the brink by extreme heat, in farmers watching crops wither; in communities and homes swept away by floods.”

Greenhouse gases reach reord levels

“Concentrations of three key greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, reached record levels in 2024, which is the last year for which we have consolidated global numbers,” said WMO scientist John Kennedy.

Carbon dioxide levels were 152% higher than the pre-industrial base, methane was 266% higher and nitrous oxide was 125% higher.

The year 2024 also showed the single biggest one-year increase on record, with data from individual sites around the world indicating that levels of these greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2025.

Energy imbalance

The WMO has introduced a new measure: the Earth’s energy imbalance, which “measures the rate at which energy enters and leaves the Earth’s system”. 

Kennedy explained that, in a stable climate, the energy coming in from the sun is balanced by the energy going out from the climate system. 

“However, in the current climate, there is an imbalance. We have the same amounts of incoming energy, but there’s less outgoing energy due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

This positive imbalance, with energy accumulating in the Earth’s system, means the Earth is warming. Although it has been warming since 1960, the rate at which it is warming is speeding up – initially from around 0.13 watts to 0.3 watts in 2025.

“That energy is not accumulating evenly,” said Kennedy, with the oceans absorbing 91% of that accumulating energy, 3% going into melting and warming ice, 5% being absorbed by the land, and 1% warming the atmosphere. 

Hottest oceans on record

“Over three billion people depend on marine and coastal resources for their livelihoods. They’re living off the ocean. Nearly 11% of the global population lives on low-lying coasts directly exposed to coastal hazards, so they’re very vulnerable to things like sea level rise,” said Kennedy.

The oceans are warming, with 2025 recording the highest ocean heat on record. And the rate of ocean warming is speeding up, with the rate between 2005 and 2025 more than twice that observed between 1960 and 2005

As ocean water warms, it expands. This, melting ice and the transfer of water from the oceans to land, is causing the sea level rise to rise. Like with hear, the rate of sea level rise is faster from 2012 to present than fbetween 1993 and 2012.

The ocean continues to absorb carbon dioxide, playing a fundamental role in the climate system. 

It is estimated that the ocean has absorbed around 29% of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities in the past decade, but this has reduced the ocean’s pH, making it more acidic and harming coral reefs and other sensitive areas that provide food and shelter for marine life. 

Glaciers melting faster

Around 3% of the energy trapped in the Earth system is melting ice, both ice sheets and glaciers. WMO has tracked glacier melt since 1970, and it has continuous records for a set of reference glaciers across 19 global mountain regions.

Like with other climate trends, the ice has started melting faster over the past few years.

“In 2025, our glaciers continued to retreat, and ice continued to melt. The warming ocean and melting land-based ice are driving the long-term rise in global mean sea level,” said Kennedy.

Global mean temperature

Despite 2025 being in a La Niña weather cycle, where cooler air is expected in contrast to the hotter El Niño cycle of  2024, it was “the second or third hottest year on record, depending on the data set used”, said Barrett.

“In 2025, global mean temperature was about 1.43º C above the 1850-1900 [pre-industrial] baseline. Between 2015 and 2025, we experienced the hottest 11 years on record,” she said, adding that this had been corroborated by nine different data sets.

“The past 11 years, in all nine of these datasets, are the warmest years on record, and the past three years are the three warmest.”

Greenland, northern Canada, western Europe, Fennoscandia, the Mediterranean and many parts of Asia experienced significant warm anomalies in comparison to other regions, according to the report.

Referring to the  last 11 years, the hottest on record, Guterres said that “when history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence, it’s a call to act.”

“Climate stress is also exposing another truth. Our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security. Now more than ever, we must accelerate the just transition to renewable energy,” said Guterres.

Image Credits: WMO.