Earth's climate imbalance

The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) State of the Global Climate report 2025 confirms that 2015-2025 are the hottest 11 years on record, and that 2025 was the second or third hottest year on record, at about 1.43C above the 1850-1900 average.

Extreme events around the world, including intense heat, heavy rainfall and tropical cyclones, caused disruption and devastation and highlighted the vulnerability of our inter-connected economies and societies.

The ocean continues to warm and absorb carbon dioxide. It has been absorbing the equivalent of about eighteen times the annual human energy use each year for the past two decades. Annual sea ice extent in the Arctic was at or near a record low, Antarctic sea ice extent was the third lowest on record, and glacier melt continued unabated, according to the report.

“The state of the global climate is in a state of emergency.  Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.  Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“Humanity has just endured the eleven hottest years on record. When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence.  It is a call to act,” said Mr Guterres.

 WMO’s flagship State of the Global Climate report was released on World Meteorological Day on 23 March, which has the theme Observing Today, Protecting Tomorrow.

For the first time, the report includes the Earth’s energy imbalance as one of the key climate indicators.

The Earth’s energy balance measures 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. 

However, increasing concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - to their highest level in at least 800,000 years have upset this equilibrium.

The Earth’s energy imbalance has increased since its observational record began in 1960, particularly in the past 20 years. It reached a new high in 2025. 

 “Scientific advances have improved our understanding of the Earth’s energy imbalance and of the reality facing our planet and our climate right now,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “Human activities are increasingly disrupting the natural equilibrium and we will live with these consequences for hundreds and thousands of years.”

“On a day-to-day basis, our weather has become more extreme. In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding caused thousands of deaths, impacted millions of people and caused billions in economic losses,” said Celeste Saulo.

The warming of the atmosphere including near the Earth’s surface (the temperatures that humans feel) represents just one percent of the excess energy, whilst about five percent is stored in the continental land masses.

More than 91 percent of the excess heat is stored in the ocean, which acts as a major buffer against higher temperatures on land. Ocean heat content reached a new record high in 2025 and its rate of warming more than doubled from 1960-2005 to 2005-2025.

Another three percent of the excess energy warms and melts ice. The ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland have both lost significant mass and the annual average Arctic sea-ice extent for 2025 was the lowest or second lowest on record in the satellite era. Exceptional glacier mass loss occurred in Iceland and along the Pacific coast of North America in 2025. 

 he warming ocean and melting ice are driving the long-term rise in global mean sea level, which has accelerated since satellite measurements began in 1993.

Ocean warming and sea level rise will continue for centuries, according to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Changes in ocean warming, and deep ocean pH are irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales.

The report is accompanied by an interactive story map. It has a dedicated supplement on extreme events, highlighting their cascading impacts, including on food insecurity and displacement.

It includes a chapter on climate and health, showing how rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and changes in extremes are affecting where and when health risks emerge, how severe they become and who is most exposed.

It highlights the examples of the mosquito-borne dengue disease and of heat stress – and illustrates how climate data, early warning systems and integrated climate services for health can protect people in a warming world.

“And in this age of war, climate stress is also exposing another truth: our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilizing both the climate and global security.  Today’s report should come with a warning label: climate chaos is accelerating and delay is deadly,” said Mr Guterres.

The State of the Global Climate Report 2025 is based on scientific contributions from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, WMO Regional Climate Centres, United Nations partners and dozens of experts.

“WMO’s State of the Global Climate report seeks to inform decision-making. It is in keeping with the theme of World Meteorological Day because when we observe today, we don’t just predict the weather, we protect tomorrow. Tomorrow’s people. Tomorrow’s planet,” said Celeste Saulo.

Desert dreams - a fragile reality

Dubai beach scene.                                                              Photo: C Simpson

By day three in Dubai, I had developed the air-con cough. Not a virus  just the inevitable consequence of living inside a constant, refrigerated cocoon. Step outside and the heat hits like an opened furnace door. Step back in and your lungs tighten in protest at the mechanical chill. It is the rhythm of the place: scorch and soothe, glare and gloss.

UAE’s centrepiece city exists in defiance of its geography. In temperature terms alone, it is one of the least hospitable urban environments on Earth – and in a warming world, it will only become hotter. Yet the rate of construction is astonishing. Towers rise as fast as cranes can swing them into place; whole districts seem to materialise between breakfast and dinner.

Of course, it is built on extraordinary wealth and the dreamlike availability of oil. Dubai is an artificial oasis – a monument not merely to human ingenuity, but to humanity’s refusal to confront the climate problem of its own making. A glittering dystopia where the insidious power of hydrocarbons is rendered in glass, steel and relentless development.

Approaching the oasis
Even before descending to Dubai International Airport, the contradictions are visible from 35,000 feet. On my flight we passed over Iraq near Baghdad and skirted the precarious artery of the Suez Canal — two names that, in recent days, have once again featured heavily in global news bulletins. As dawn broke, I peered down at oil fields and flares burning defiantly against the coming heat, flames licking at the pale sky as if to underline the point.

And then – unmistakably – Dubai itself. The city rises almost obscenely from the desert. Outlying villas and settlements sit marooned in seas of sand, encompassed by dunes that quietly remind you who truly rules this landscape. For now, oil tames it. But it still feels conjured rather than grown – summoned by capital and climate control.

If I had to describe Dubai in a poetic turn of phrase, I might conjure up something like “a mirage of permanence”. It's a place where even the coastline is engineered, where the palm-shaped archipelago of Palm Jumeirah is pressed into existence at immense environmental cost. From space, it forms a striking geometric flourish. On the ground, the artifice is harder to ignore.

City of paradox
Dubai must be one of the sunniest and hottest cities on Earth. It has enough sunshine hours to power its economy many times over. And yet, flying in, I saw remarkably few solar panels. Why harness the free energy raining from the sky when oil still flows so readily beneath the sand?

Everything here depends on energy abundance –desalinated water, chilled interiors, illuminated towers, indoor ski slopes. Oil facilitates life at scale in a landscape most species wisely abandoned long ago. But that reliance lends the city an unsettling fragility. It feels as though, should the flow falter, the desert would patiently reclaim its territory.

That fragility now feels sharper after the geopolitical events (to out it politely) of recent days. The Middle East is once again in turmoil. Conflict ripples outward from long-contested fault lines. Airspace closures, missile exchanges, diplomatic brinkmanship – each development carries implications for a city and region where prosperity depends on seamless global connectivity.

Dubai’s success is inseparable from its role as a transport hub. Emirates has built a global network that stitches Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia together through a single desert crossroads. Freight, finance, tourism and conferences all converge here. When regional tensions rise, flight paths bend, insurance premiums spike, and the choreography of global movement becomes more complicated.

So far, Dubai remains outwardly calm – insulated by wealth, diplomacy and careful positioning. The malls are full, the hotels busy, the cranes still turning. But the very geography that made it strategically valuable also places it within reach of instability. Its gleaming airport terminals are both gateway and vulnerability.

Inside the mirage
From street level, the high-rises form a relentless backdrop. Development continues at breakneck speed in every direction. For now it dazzles – attracting holidaymakers, entrepreneurs, influencers and conference-goers. Yet scratch the surface and Dubai can feel like a glossy façade stretched over one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth.

Step outside too long and the heat drains you. Even the sea feels languid, as if exhausted by the thermal burden it absorbs each summer. The beaches are artificially immaculate, the interiors plush, the service seamless – but always mediated by machinery humming out of sight.

In that sense, Dubai is less a city than a controlled environment. And perhaps that is why the current geopolitical tremors feel symbolically resonant. A metropolis built on the assumption of perpetual growth, stable trade routes and uninterrupted energy flows suddenly exists in a region where none of those can ever be fully guaranteed. A hub in turmoil

The contradictions of Dubai’s engineered calm feel especially stark against the backdrop of the current geopolitical shockwaves. In the past week, airspace over the United Arab Emirates has been temporarily shut down, and flights to and from Dubai International Airport – one of the busiest aviation hubs in the world – have been repeatedly suspended as regional military tensions escalate.

The result has been chaotic for thousands of travellers: tourists, business visitors and long-term residents, who used Dubai as a tax-free home, are now stuck in the city with no clear way out. Transit passengers whose flight plans relied on smooth connections through the Gulf are stranded in terminals or hotels while airlines and air authorities scramble to adjust schedules.

Governments from Europe to Australia are urging their nationals to register with embassies and “shelter in place”, while some are planning mass repatriation operations – not for tourists alone, but for expatriates and workers who had chosen to make this glittering hub their base.

In some cases, officials have even resorted to military flights to bring home ministers and citizens caught up in the disruption, a stark reminder that Dubai’s global connectivity can become a vulnerability when that connectivity falters

Questions under the gloss
Development continues apace. More towers, more malls, more artificial islands. For now, Dubai thrives precisely because it is so curated – a place where appearances matter more than origins, where the environment is conditioned, cooled and conquered.

But beneath it all lies a deeper contradiction. We know the planet is heating. We know deserts are expanding. We know fossil fuels both enable and imperil modern civilisation. And yet here, in one of the most extreme climates on Earth, humanity builds ever higher as if the future were simply a longer version of the present.

Current events in the Middle East are a reminder that energy, geography and politics are inseparable. Oil does not merely power air-conditioning; it shapes alliances, conflicts and vulnerabilities. Dubai is both beneficiary and symbol of that system – its skyline a physical manifestation of hydrocarbon modernity.

Last October, from my hotel balcony at dusk, the city shimmered under a haze of heat and humidity. At dusk the lights came on, one tower after another, defying darkness and desert alike.

Whether Dubai represents our boldest ingenuity or our most extravagant denial may ultimately depend on forces far beyond its immaculate highways – on geopolitics, on energy transitions and on climate trajectories.

And, perhaps most immediately, on how long the air-conditioning keeps purring.

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Editor’s note: this edition re-published due to a link error on original (2 March 2023)