For the first time, the World Meteorological Organization has added the “Earth’s Energy Imbalance” index to its annual climate report — an index that illustrates how quickly the climate system is gaining heat.
The Earth's climate system is getting out of balance at an increasing rate, according to a report. State of the Global Climate 2025 of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), published on March 23, 2026. According to the report, the years 2015–2025 were the eleven warmest years ever measured, and 2025 was the second or third warmest year on record, with an average temperature of about 1.43 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average of 1850–1900. (World Meteorological Organization)
The main innovation in this year's report is the inclusion of The Earth's Energy Imbalance As one of the key climate indicators. This is the difference between the amount of energy that the Earth absorbs from the sun and the amount of energy that it emits back into space. In a stable climate, these two flows are almost equal. However, as greenhouse gas concentrations rise, less energy escapes into space, and more heat is trapped within the oceans, atmosphere, continents and glaciers. According to the WMO, this indicator reached its highest level in 2025 since its observational record began in 1960, and is now at a 65-year high.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the findings in particularly stark terms. In a video message accompanying the report, he said that the Earth is “being pushed beyond its limits,” and that all major climate indicators are signaling distress. The practical meaning of the energy imbalance, he said, is that our planet is trapping heat faster than it can emit it. Guterres linked the scientific findings to people’s daily lives: rising food prices due to droughts and storms, extreme heat stress on workers, damaged crops, and communities being washed away by floods. (unfccc.int)
The scientific significance of the new index is particularly important because it allows us to look at the entire climate system as a whole. According to the WMO, only about 1 percent of the excess energy is felt as warming of the air near the ground — that is, the temperatures that humans feel directly. More than 91 percent of the excess heat is absorbed by the oceans, about 5 percent is stored on land, and about another 3 percent heats and melts ice. Therefore, even if the rate of increase in air temperature varies from year to year, the continued accumulation of heat in the oceans and glaciers shows that global warming is continuing apace.
The oceans are reaching their capacity.
The report itself states that the oceans have absorbed an amount of heat equal to about 18 times the annual energy consumption of humanity over the past two decades. The heat content of the oceans peaked again in 2025, and their rate of warming has more than doubled compared to the period 1960–2005. At the same time, the mass loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has continued, the annual extent of Arctic sea ice was the lowest or second lowest in the satellite era, and Antarctic sea ice was the third lowest on record. Global sea level rise, which has been accelerating since satellite measurements began in 1993, is one direct result of this process.
The introduction of the energy imbalance index into the annual report is a turning point in both media and science, because it shifts the discussion from the usual debates about tenths of a degree to the more fundamental question: how much excess heat is entering the climate system, and where is it going? The same article quotes scientists who explain that the new index connects the oceans, atmosphere, ice, and land into a single, simpler, clearer physical picture.
The index that explains why storms are getting stronger and heat waves are more frequent
From a public perspective, this is perhaps the most important point in this year’s report. The average surface temperature remains the most familiar measure, but it alone does not tell the whole story. The energy imbalance measure explains why storms are getting stronger, why heat waves are becoming more frequent, why ice continues to melt even in La Niña years, and why climate change is not just “another temperature increase” but a profound shift in the planet’s energy balance. Therefore, the WMO’s message in this report is particularly stark: warming is no longer just a long-term statistical trend, but a measurable physical disturbance to the fundamental mechanism that keeps the climate system in balance.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Forgive me, all the commenters here, you are obviously young, but it's nonsense that these are the warmest years, with all due respect to the scientists, it's not! There were many more warm days decades ago and there were also much more winds and storms than in recent years, the general climate is changing, that's true, but the measurements don't match what I felt in Parosh 70 and 80 years ago!
You don't have to go far. Yesterday, Trump accused Starmer of diverting British resources to build wind power that will make energy more expensive for British residents, when the opposite is true. In a post-truth world, even economic arguments are unable to help.
Father, thank you for the response. But I still haven't received an answer to my question. Unfortunately, I understand this very well and it's especially sad that this is a problem that ultimately our lives depend on and we have no choice but to solve. On the other hand, the issue of lobbying, bribing decision-makers and corruption by vested interests is something that, unfortunately, is also relevant to many other, diverse issues. I mentioned the coronavirus pandemic as an example of an existential global crisis, and here too there will be those who will claim that it was not a crisis but "mind engineering" by pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, in order to make a lot of money off of us (and other, practical, claims that are completely unfounded).
The point I'm making is that there is enormous economic potential in solving the climate crisis, so the question arises - is it possible that no actions or initiatives are being taken for this? True, there is lobbying and bribery, and yet, it is puzzling to me that the reports and articles that do treat the climate crisis as a real problem are mostly publications about more and more studies that only warn us of the worst.
The reason is the enormous fieldwork done by the oil, gas, and coal industries in lobbying – a dirty word for bribing decision-makers. They identified a weakness of democracy – whereby heads of state tend to do what the people demand, such as fighting the climate crisis, and donated a lot of money to authoritarian rulers who turned democracies into dictatorships in disguise, and of course, like Trump, only considered the interests of the capitalists and not the interests of the public.
They also bought media outlets – did you know that Al Gore once gave an objective interview to Fox News in the early 2000s? Well, not anymore. The channel has become a climate conspiracy channel. Not to mention the Wall Street Journal, all of Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets (strong control in the UK, US, and Australia), and more. They softened the others with the whip of advertising. It is very difficult to find criticism, even if it is unjustified, for the lack of action on climate.
And not just conventional media outlets – try writing something in X about the climate crisis and it will be condemned to oblivion. In Israel too, try to find something intrinsic about the climate issue that is not in Haaretz or the science news sites (my competitors and Bidan). We are very affected, the Middle East is very affected, but no one is willing or able to say this out loud.
For some reason, around the issue of climate, certainly in richer and more established countries, there is no sense of an existential global crisis, and despite the many warnings issued by organizations working on the issue and backed up by research, this issue is still received with great disdain. At least that's how it feels. I wonder, are there really not enough initiatives and actions to try and solve this, or are there but they are not effective enough, not proven, and for other reasons simply do not receive the exposure?
To me, this is puzzling, because during the coronavirus pandemic, we did receive a living example of how humanity knows how to act quickly and effectively to solve what it perceives as a real existential crisis.
Personal experience is not a measure.
In the area where I live, 2025 was one of the coldest years on record. This year has been colder than usual so far.