An international group of researchers has produced a fourth update to key indicators of the state of the climate system set out in the IPCC AR6 assessment, building on previous editions in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The Indicators of Global Climate Change 2025 report notes that despite the increasing deployment of renewable energy, GHG emissions are at an all-time high, reaching 56.8 ± 5.5 GtCO2e in 2024.

The consequences are that the carbon budget, the total carbon that can be emitted while keeping warming below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, now stands at just 130 billion tonnes from the start of 2026. At current emissions levels, that will be exhausted in around three years, with the world risks crossing the 1.5C limit by 2030 if emissions continue at current rate and warming reaching 1.37C in 2025.

One of the indicators, the Earth's energy imbalance (EEI) provides a crucial measure of the overall heating of the planet and the pace of climate change, and this has more than doubled since the 1976–1995 period. A newly added indicator of temperature extremes, the number of days experiencing marine heatwaves, has more than tripled between 1991 and 2025.

Whilst emissions are no longer rapidly increasing, the increase in the level of radiative forcing in the six-year period since AR6 would be expected to increase the EEI and suggest that as the Earth's temperature has warmed in response to the forcing, the increase in EEI should be less than the increase in radiative forcing. Nevertheless, the EEI trend is higher than expected (a 40 per cent increase in EEI since AR6).

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