1370. 2025 Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink

On October 29, BioScience published the 2025 Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink, sounding the alarm that the impacts of human-induced climate change are no longer a future threat, but a real reality.

Key Highlights

• 2024 saw a record-breaking average global surface temperature, suggesting intensifying climate change.
• Warming may be accelerating, possibly due to reduced aerosol cooling, strong cloud feedback, and global darkening.
• Human activities are causing ecosystem overshoot. Population, livestock and meat consumption, and gross domestic product (GDP) are all at record highs.
• In 2024, fossil fuel energy consumption reached an all-time high, with coal, oil, and gas all peaking. Combined solar and wind power consumption also reached an all-time high, but was only 31 times lower than fossil fuel energy consumption.
• As of 2025, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have reached record levels, exacerbated by a sharp decline in land carbon sinks due to El Niño and intense forest fires.
• Global tree cover loss due to fires reached an all-time high, with tropical primary forest fires increasing by 370% compared to 2023. This is contributing to increased emissions and accelerating biodiversity loss.
• Ocean heat content has reached record highs, causing the largest coral bleaching event on record, affecting 84% of coral reef areas.
• As of 2025, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are at record lows. The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may be nearing tipping points, potentially resulting in a global sea level rise of several meters.
• Disasters with severe damage and significant losses have surged, with at least 135 people killed in floods in Texas, wildfires in California alone causing more than $250 billion in damage, and climate change-related disasters costing more than $18 trillion globally since 2000.
• Climate change is endangering thousands of wildlife species, with more than 3,500 currently at risk, and there is new evidence of climate change-related animal population declines.
• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Gyre is weakening, posing a threat of large-scale climate change.
• Climate change is already affecting water quality and resources, undermining agricultural productivity and sustainable water management, and increasing the risk of conflict over water.
• Accelerating warming, self-reinforcing feedbacks, and tipping points may mean that a dangerous greenhouse Earth orbit outcome is becoming a reality.
• Climate change mitigation strategies are cost-effective and urgently needed. Limiting warming remains possible with bold and swift action, from forest protection and renewable energy to plant-based diets.
• Social tipping points can spur rapid change. Even small-scale, sustained nonviolent movements can shift social norms and policies, highlighting important paths forward amid political impasses and ecological crises.
• We need systems change that connects individual technical approaches with broader social change, governance, policy, and social movements.

(References)
The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink, BioScience (2025). https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/…

Contributor: Miyuki Iiyama, Information Program