“Between 2015 and 2025, we will experience the 11 hottest years on record”said WMO Deputy Executive Secretary Ko Barrett.
Last year it was about 1.43°C above the 1850-1900 baseline, in addition to breaking a record for ocean heat, he explained.
gloomy state of the weather
Presenting a grim picture of the state of the climate in 2025, Ms Barrett highlighted that as glaciers continue to retreat and ice continues to melt, “warming oceans and melting land ice are driving the long-term rise in global mean sea level”.
He said the findings are an inspiration “for work harder to get life-saving forecasts and early warnings into the hands of those who can protect lives and livelihoods” so they can mitigate the devastating impacts of the current climate unrest on the most vulnerable.
For its part, the WMO has been publishing annual climate updates for more than 30 years, and record numbers over the past decade have been a cause of growing concern.
Annual global mean temperature anomalies relative to a pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900).
Record levels of greenhouse gases
The agency’s chief scientist, John Kennedy, said atmospheric concentrations of three key greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – reached record levels in 2024, the last year for which there are consolidated global figures.
This marked the largest year-on-year increase.
“Data from different places around the world indicate that the levels of these greenhouse gases will continue to increase in 2025” and modify “the energy balance of the planet,” he added.
Worrying energy imbalance
Mr. Kennedy explained that in a balanced system, the incoming energy from the sun is approximately the same as the amount of outgoing energy, but this is not the case today.
“There is less energy going out due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases,” he said. “More energy coming in than going out means that energy is building up in the Earth system..”
The Earth’s energy imbalance is a new indicator that the WMO has begun to track, and the results point to a notable acceleration in the rate at which warming has progressed between 2001 and 2025.
“He The largest fraction of that absorbed energy goes to the oceans, about 90 percent of the excess energy in the climate system.“said Mr Kennedy. “This is important because more than three billion people depend on these marine and coastal resources for their livelihoods. “They live off the ocean and almost 11 percent of the world’s population lives on low-lying coasts directly exposed to coastal hazards.”