The World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate 2025 report on March 23, and the findings continue to reverberate through the climate science community two weeks later. The report's central conclusion is blunt: the Earth's climate is "more out of balance than at any time in observed history." [1] For the first time, the WMO included Earth's energy imbalance -- the difference between incoming solar radiation and outgoing thermal radiation -- as a key indicator. The imbalance has reached its highest measured value, and it is accelerating.

As this paper noted in its April 1 edition, the report documents record greenhouse gas concentrations and accelerating ocean warming. The updated data, analyzed in depth by Carbon Brief's DeBriefed newsletter on April 2, adds granularity that the initial coverage missed. [2] The oceans absorbed roughly 93 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in 2025, a figure consistent with historical patterns but at a rate that has more than doubled compared to the 1960-2000 baseline. The ocean is not just warming. It is warming faster than the models predicted it would be warming at this point.

The Guardian reported that the energy imbalance means the Earth is accumulating heat energy equivalent to roughly 4.6 Hiroshima bombs per second. [3] The metaphor is imprecise but directionally useful: the planet is absorbing more energy than it can radiate back into space, and the surplus is going overwhelmingly into the oceans, where it drives thermal expansion, marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, and the disruption of thermohaline circulation patterns that regulate weather systems across the Northern Hemisphere.

The report also quantified, for the first time in a WMO publication, the mortality burden of fossil fuel combustion: 8.1 million deaths per year attributable to air pollution from fossil fuel burning. [4] The BBC described the figure as "staggering" and noted that it exceeds the combined death toll from malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. [4] The deaths are concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, where regulatory frameworks are weakest and exposure is highest. The same countries that are now rationing fuel because of the war are the countries where that fuel, when burned, kills their citizens.

The NYT's coverage focused on what the energy imbalance means for the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree Celsius target. [5] The answer, implicit in the data and explicit in the report's conclusions, is that 1.5 degrees is functionally unreachable without emissions reductions that no government has implemented or proposed. The WMO projects that global average temperatures will breach 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels within the next two to three years, not as a temporary spike during an El Nino event -- as happened in 2024 -- but as a sustained annual average.

The timing of the report's release, during a war that has disrupted global energy markets and prompted countries to burn whatever fuel they can secure regardless of its carbon intensity, underscores the collision between climate ambition and geopolitical reality. Europe, which spent three years building LNG import capacity to replace Russian gas, is now competing with Asia for non-Gulf oil shipments. The carbon intensity of the global energy mix has increased since February, not because anyone chose higher emissions, but because a war forced the world's energy system into survival mode.

The WMO's secretary-general, Celeste Saulo, said the report should serve as "a wake-up call." It is the same phrase her predecessors used in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The alarm clock has been ringing for six years. The planet's energy imbalance keeps setting records. The snooze button, it turns out, does not reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It just makes the next alarm louder.

-- Dara Osei, London