All of Earth's Climate Indictors continue in the Wrong Direction

 Forster, P. M., et al;  Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 2641–2680, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025, 2025.

The article below is primarily excerpted from the paper cited above.

from https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/2641/2025/

The annual Indicators of Global Climate change, IPCC, update provided an assessment of human influence on key indicators of climate every five years.  The figure above presents a summary of the main indicators from.

Last year (2024) global surface temperatures appears to have exceeded 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, though the average surface temperature for the last 10 years is 1.24  °C above pre-industrial levels. The high level of global temperature recorded last year is typical of what we expect from current best estimates of human-induced warming, modulated by internal climate variability-specifically El Nino in the Atlantic and subsequent droughts.

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/2641/2025/

Land temperatures average 2014-2023 are now 1.24  °C above pre-industrial levels at this review. The previous report found surface temperatures 2011-2019 averaged 1.02  °C above pre-industrial levels. The planet is warming, and the climate models have done a relatively good job of predicting the observed rise in temperatures; but have not succeeded at predicting localized changes and weather patterns. The increasing land temperatures, closely related to global warming levels, drive increasing evapotranspiration, decreasing soil moisture (Seo et al., 2025). As moisture leaves the land it contributes to the increased rate of global mean sea-level rise along with the melting glaciers.

Methane and biomass emissions (which are to a large extent natural) had a strong component of change related to climate feedbacks. Average greenhouse gas emission worldwide were 53.6 gigatons per year for the last ten years. The previous study found that the average global greenhouse gas emissions averaged 52.9 gigatons per year.

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/2641/2025/

The scientists found that global mean sea-level rise continues to accelerate. From 1901 to 2024 mean sea level rose 228.0 mm at an average rate of 1.85 mm per year.  The scientists noted the need to explore they might develop tracking for regional climate extremes and their attribution, which are particularly relevant for supporting actions on adaptation and loss and damage.

Sea level rise is accelerating. https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/2641/2025/

Generally, scientists and scientific organizations have an important role as “watchdogs” to critically inform evidence-based decision-making. This annual update traced to IPCC methods can provide a reliable, timely source of trustworthy information; IGCC and the complementary updates of the State of the Climate (BAMS) and State of the Global Climate (WMO) reports very much rely on the continued support of high-quality global monitoring networks of atmospheric and climate data and also on open data sources that are regularly updated and easily accessed.

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/2641/2025/

This is a critical decade: human-induced global warming rates are at their highest historical level, and 1.5 °C global warming might be expected to be reached or exceeded in around 5 years in the absence of cooling from major volcanic eruptions. Yet this is also the decade when global GHG emissions could be expected to peak and begin to substantially decline do to slow but sure changes in our fossil fuel based economies and the peak population having been reached in China (and hopefully in India).

The indicators of global climate change found  that the Earth's energy imbalance has increased to around 1.0 W m⁻², averaged over the last 12 years, which represents a 25 % increase on the value assessed for 2006–2018 by the previous report. This means that even after the annual emission fall the planet will continue to warm due to the response of slow components in the climate system (glaciers, deep ocean, ice sheets) and committed long-term sea-level rise (through ocean thermal expansion and land-based ice melt/loss.

However, rapid and stringent GHG emission decreases could halve warming rates over the next 20 years (McKenna et al., 2021). Global GHG emissions are at a long-term high, yet there are signs that their rate of increase has slowed. Do not abandon all hope. Depending on the societal choices made in this critical decade we may be able to bend the curve a little more.