The new UN climate report is boring … except when it’s not

For more than 30 years, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization has been telling us how terrible things are becoming with global climate change. Their annual “State of the Climate” report is a collection of facts and figures on climate change collected over the previous 365 days. This is an authoritative look at the state of our global climate and its increasingly precarious condition.

And I, a climate journalist, almost never write anything about it.

This year’s edition, covering 2025, is released today.

The conclusions are grim, even frightening. But, like every year, it also feels like a little rehearsal. “What exactly is new here?” » I usually ask myself this question before moving on to the next mission.

It’s not just me who can reject this particular press deployment. Past coverage of the State of the Climate report and similar documents has shown that you, the reader, have limited interest in articles about another UN climate report containing warnings of impending catastrophe.

The fact that the last 11 years have been the warmest on record? Yawn. The announcement that greenhouse gases in the air are reaching levels unprecedented in human history? Wake me up when you have something new to report. Are the oceans warming at an unprecedented rate? Didn’t we already know that?

The results should be shockingly reminiscent of planetary vital signs flashing red. But similar observations were made last year…and the year before that.

However, the very fact that these reports seem too routine to discuss is a testament to how much progress has been made on climate change, if only in the last decade. Unfortunately, we have become somewhat immune to bad climate news.

Although individual data points have been reported before, this edition contains more detailed and disturbing climate information than any previous one. If this were an audiobook, it would be filled with shouting rather than words, with the narrator gripped by the urgency of the information it contains.

This realization led me to make the crazy (for me) decision to tell you about this version. Additionally, this year’s compendium contains information that previous editions did not present – ​​new information that helps explain the acceleration of global warming in recent years.

One section of the report contains details about Earth’s energy imbalance: how much solar energy the atmosphere lets in versus how much escapes into space. Any additional energy trapped in the atmosphere or oceans acts as a warming agent.

For Earth’s climate to remain at approximately the same stable global average temperature, this equation must balance.

But by 2025, the report found the imbalance was greater than what has been observed in the 65 years this data has been recorded. The imbalance has increased over the past two decades, before reaching this new peak.

“Human activities are increasingly disrupting the natural balance and we will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement.

Interestingly, only a small amount of excess heat contributes to atmospheric warming, the report notes. More than 91% of excess heat is stored in the oceans, where heat content reached a record high last year. Excessive heat also warms and melts the planet’s ice caps, raising sea levels around the world.

Record levels of greenhouse gases in the air also explain why so many extreme events, from heat waves to floods, are now occurring with more regularity and severity.

Ultimately, the State of the Climate report may not be “news” per se, but it is important. And it’s a report I’ll return to over the course of the year as a reference point, while also being determined not to scoff at next year’s edition when it arrives in my inbox.

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