The World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate 2025 report last week. It introduced a new tracking indicator — Earth's energy imbalance — and reported it at its highest recorded value since continuous observation began in 1960. The previous eleven years, 2015 through 2025, are the eleven hottest years in the instrumental record. Global temperatures in 2025 reached approximately 1.43°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline.

The energy imbalance figure describes something precise: more heat entering the planet from the sun than is leaving it through radiation. That surplus heats oceans, melts ice, and drives the warming trend. The oceans have broken heat records for nine consecutive years. Glaciers are in sustained retreat. Extreme weather events that were statistical rarities are becoming seasonal expectations.

What makes the report's timing notable is that it arrived in a week when geopolitical pressures were driving increased fossil fuel demand rather than decreased. Climate reporting and climate reality have increasingly diverged from policy trajectory — a gap the WMO report documents with precision but cannot close.

Some climate scientists on X noted that a portion of the record energy imbalance reflects natural La Niña to El Niño variability, not solely human forcing. That context matters for attribution. It does not change the direction of the trend.

The WMO's new indicator is designed to be less politically contestable than temperature records, which face regular attribution challenges. The imbalance is physics. It is also accelerating.

-- DARA OSEI, Geneva