By Shanta Kumar Shrestha
All-time high greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere continue to drive heat records on land and sea, with long-lasting consequences for humanity, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warned.
WMO scientific officer John Kennedy said global weather is still under the influence of La Nina, a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that cools surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It brings changes in winds, pressure, and rainfall patterns. Conditions oscillate between La Niña and its warming opposite, El Niño, with neutral conditions in between.
Forecasts indicate neutral conditions by the middle of 2026 with a possible El Niño developing before the end of the year, said Kennedy. If so, “then we’re likely to see maybe elevated temperatures again in 2027”, he told a press conference. The World Meteorological Organisation’s deputy chief, Ko Barrett, said the outlook was a “dire picture“.
“Between 2015 and 2025, we experienced the hottest 11 years on record,” WMO’s deputy executive secretary Ko Barrett said. Last year was some 1.43°C above the 1850 to 1900 baseline in addition to breaking an ocean heat record, she explained. Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.
Record greenhouse gas levels
Hot on the heels of a scorching decade, the planet’s climate is more out of balance than at any time in observed history. For the first time, the WMO climate report includes the planet’s energy imbalance: the rate at which energy enters and leaves the Earth system. Under a stable climate, incoming energy from the Sun is about the same as the amount of outgoing energy, the Geneva-based agency said.
The Earth’s energy imbalance is a new indicator. WMO has started tracking, with results pointing to a notable acceleration in the rate at which warming has been progressing between 2001 and 2025. Human activities are increasingly disrupting natural equilibrium, and we will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years. More than 91 per cent of the excess heat is stored in the ocean.
Ocean heat content reached a new record high in 2025 and its rate of warming more than doubled from 1960-2005 to 2005-2025,” the WMO said. Ocean warming has far-reaching consequences, such as degradation of marine ecosystems, biodiversity loss and reduction of the ocean carbon sink, the agency said.
“It fuels tropical and subtropical storms and exacerbates ongoing sea-ice loss in the polar regions.”
The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have both lost considerable mass, and the annual average extent of Arctic Sea ice in 2025 was the lowest or second lowest ever recorded in the satellite era. Last year, the global mean sea level was around 11 centimetres higher than when satellite altimetry records began in 1993. Ocean warming and sea level rise are projected to continue for centuries.
For its part, WMO has been issuing annual climate updates for more than 30 years, and the record figures in the last decade have been a growing cause of concern.
This marked the single largest year-on-year increase. “Data from individual sites around the world indicates that levels of these greenhouse gases continue to increase in 2025” and to modify “the energy balance of the planet”, he added. He explained that under a balanced system, incoming energy from the sun is the same as the amount of outgoing energy, but it is not the case at present.”
The report said the WMO provided the evidence it sees, hoping that the information “will encourage people to take action”.
But there was “no denying” that “these indicators are not moving in a direction that provides a lot of hope.
With war gripping the Middle East and fuel prices soaring, Guterres said the world should heed the alarm call.
“In this age of war, climate stress is also exposing another truth: our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both climate and global security,” he said.
“Today’s report should come with a warning label: climate chaos is accelerating, and delay is deadly,” he said.
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