World Meteorological Organization has warned that the amount of heat trapped within the Earth’s climate system reached an unprecedented level in 2025, intensifying concerns that the effects of global warming could persist for thousands of years.
In its latest State of the Global Climate report, the UN climate agency confirmed that the 11 hottest years ever recorded have all occurred between 2015 and 2025, underscoring the accelerating pace of planetary warming.
According to the report, 2025 ranked among the second or third warmest years on record, with global temperatures estimated at about 1.43 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average.
António Guterres described the findings as a stark warning, saying the global climate is now in a state of emergency.
“The planet is being pushed beyond its limits, and every major climate indicator is flashing red,” he said, adding that the repeated occurrence of record-breaking temperatures can no longer be viewed as coincidence but as an urgent call for global action.
For the first time, the report also assessed the Earth’s energy imbalance — the difference between energy entering the planet from the sun and energy leaving it back into space. Under normal climatic conditions, these flows remain roughly balanced, but scientists say rising greenhouse gas concentrations have severely disrupted that equilibrium.
The WMO noted that levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are now at their highest in at least 800,000 years, driving a sustained increase in retained atmospheric heat.
According to the agency, the Earth’s energy imbalance has steadily worsened since measurements began in 1960, with the sharpest increase recorded over the past two decades and a new peak reached in 2025.
Celeste Saulo said scientific advances now offer clearer insight into the scale of the imbalance and the long-term risks attached to it.
She warned that human activities are increasingly destabilising the planet’s natural systems, with consequences likely to endure for centuries and even millennia.
The report also found that more than 91 percent of the excess heat generated by global warming is being absorbed by the oceans, where heat content reached another record high in 2025.
Scientists say the rate of ocean warming has now more than doubled compared with the period between 1960 and 2005, a trend that continues to fuel sea-level rise, marine ecosystem stress, and extreme weather patterns worldwide.
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