Reading a scientific report where each and every number is worse than the one before it causes a certain kind of dread. Sitting with the 2025 State of the Global Climate report, which is supported by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and jointly released by the World Meteorological Organization, is about like that. It’s not as dramatic as disaster movies. In some ways, it’s more eerie and quieter than that.
A generation ago, the headline figure—2025 ranking as the second or third hottest year since records began in 1850, sitting roughly 1.43°C above the pre-industrial average—would have seemed astounding. It reads almost like a routine now. With a temperature that was 1.33°C higher than the average for the 20th century, January 2025 alone was the warmest January on record. That figure is especially startling because it occurred during a La Niña episode, which is an atmospheric phase that usually lowers global temperatures rather than raises them.
It is worthwhile to pause on the streak itself. It is now confirmed that the years 2015 through 2025 were the eleven hottest on record, in that order. Eleven years. That isn’t data noise. That pattern resembles a freight train. “When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres. It’s an appeal to take action. Even though many governments still appear to be making an effort, it’s difficult to dispute that math.
Earth’s energy imbalance is a new key indicator that the 2025 report adds, something that earlier reports did not. This calculates the difference between the amount of solar energy that enters the planet and the amount that escapes back into space. In a stable climate, those numbers are about equal. They don’t anymore. Due to greenhouse gas concentrations that are currently at their highest levels in at least 800,000 years, the imbalance reached its highest point in the 65-year observational record in 2025. Over 91% of the trapped excess energy is being absorbed by the ocean, which over the past 20 years has been absorbing the equivalent of about eighteen times the annual energy consumption of humans. You should read that number again.
That kind of unrelenting absorption doesn’t result in striking images on the open ocean. No collapsing buildings, no mushroom clouds. In seas that shouldn’t be that hot, it results in warmer water, disturbed currents, and silently bleaching coral systems. This year, the amount of Arctic sea ice was at or close to a record low. The third-lowest sea ice on record was found in the Antarctic. The glaciers continued to melt without stopping. These numbers are causing the physical world to react in ways that seem slow until they abruptly stop.
From tropical cyclones to floods that overwhelmed infrastructure designed for a different climate era, extreme weather in 2025 killed thousands and cost billions of dollars. Future reports may view 2025 as the year that enough indicators came together to finally compel a shift in the political discourse. If they don’t, the 2026 report will merely extend that run by one more year.
Reading this data gives me the impression that there has never been a greater discrepancy between what science says and what policy is doing. The 2025 figures are neither models nor forecasts. These measurements come from the world we currently inhabit. Above all, that is what makes them difficult to put aside.
