Global greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, Earth is accumulating excessive heat and marine heatwaves are growing in frequency, a leading study on climate change reported on Thursday.
The Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) report comes as negotiators gather in the western German city of Bonn for the annual climate change conference, a key meeting ahead of the yearly COP summits.
Co-author Thomas Frölicher from Bern University summarized the findings.
"We are emitting more greenhouse gases than ever before. This is leading to a rise in the concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen in the atmosphere. As a result, we are trapping more heat within the Earth’s system and throwing the world out of balance."
Emissions of greenhouse gases reached 56.8 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2024, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels, the report warned.
The average between 2015 and 2024 was 54.6 billion tons, meaning emissions are continuing to grow despite global efforts to boost carbon-neutral energies.
Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere result in excessive heat being trapped in the Earth's system, a process known as the Earth energy imbalance (EEI).
According to the report, the figure has more than doubled from 0.40 watts per square metre in the period from 1976 to 1995 to 1.04 watts per square metre in the period from 2006 to 2025.
This causes global warming to continue at a rapid pace. For the period from 2016 to 2025, the researchers calculated a rate of 0.27 degrees per decade – the same as for 2015–2024, and above 0.23 degrees Celsius rise between 2010 and 2019.
According to the report, oceans have absorbed around 90% of the excess heat since the 1970s.
