Media release

From: ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather

The 2025 State of the Climate Report has been released, indicating that 22 of the Earth’s 35 vital signs are being pushed to critical levels, as the planet reaches its hottest temperature in the last 125,000 years.

Warming is accelerating, the report highlights, while ocean heat content, the volume of tree cover lost to fire and fossil fuel consumption rates all reached record highs. Meanwhile, the crucial Atlantic Meridional Ocean Overturning Circulation continues to weaken and may fail.

The seventh annual edition of the influential report has been issued by an international coalition of researchers, including one of Australia’s leading climate scientists, and confirms the Earth’s average annual temperature in 2024 was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels

While the world appears set to breach the 2015 Paris Agreement, contributing author Professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather and the Australian National University insisted that “every fraction of warming we manage to prevent will avert a worse climate catastrophe”.

With many global vital signs continuing to trend sharply in the wrong direction, the authors note that time is definitely of the essence if we are to avert the worst impacts of the escalating climate crisis.

“What we urgently need in Australia are real actions to rapidly reduce emissions and serious climate mitigation and adaptation strategies,” Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.

“If we fail to plan for the reality of a hotter climate with more high-impact weather events, we’ll be staring down escalating disasters that will swamp our emergency services, strain our economy, and destabilise communities here and across the region. The longer we wait, the faster we head toward climate-fuelled chaos, and that’s a risk we simply can’t afford.”

Published in the journal BioScience, “The 2025 State of the Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink” points to high-impact groups of solutions based on the authors’ analysis of global data from Project Drawdown, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to lessening atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Together the impact groups, including those mentioned below, have the potential to account for more than half of the mitigation needed to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – rather than the 3.1-degree rise the planet is on track to reach by 2100 under current policies:

Forests: Protection and reforestation projects have the potential to yield the equivalent of 88 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions benefits by 2050. That’s more than the total 30-year emissions of 600 million passenger cars.

Refrigerants: The fluids used in cooling systems include potent greenhouse gases. Significant emissions reductions – the equivalent of 100 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide – can be achieved by 2050 through better refrigerant management, and by shifting to alternate compounds that are better for the environment.

Food systems: Reducing global food waste from its current level of about 30% would not only improve food security, especially in developing countries, but have a major climate benefit – up to 89 gigatonnes’ worth of CO₂ emissions by 2050. Policies that support diets more rich in plants (78 gigatonnes) and cooking fuels that are cleaner burning (31 gigatonnes) would deliver major benefits as well.

Energy: The authors point to a need for grassroots movements advocating for a socially just phaseout of fossil fuels, and limits on the fossil fuels industry’s financial and political influence. Solar and wind energy offer potential emissions reductions of 86 gigatonnes and 57 gigatonnes, respectively.

Family planning and education: Policies focused on expanding voluntary family planning programs and ensuring primary and secondary education could result in a lowering of reproductive rates worth emissions reductions of 69 gigatonnes. Such policies could greatly benefit girls and women in less wealthy regions, helping to reduce inequality and advance gender justice.

“As a climate scientist, I can tell you the science is crystal clear - many of the solutions we need already exist, but the window to act is rapidly closing,” said Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick.

“We’re already living in a world where heatwaves are longer, hotter, and deadlier. Without bold action to slash emissions and adapt our cities, infrastructure, and health systems, we’ll be pushing human bodies beyond their limits, especially as extreme heat and humidity converge in ways we’ve never experienced before. And that’s just one example of the many impacts we have to prepare for if action isn’t taken right now.”

To address ecological overshoot, the report calls for equitable and transformative changes across many areas of society, including reducing overconsumption by the wealthy. Among the report’s other key elements:

·    In 2024, fossil fuel energy consumption hit a record high. Combined solar and wind consumption also set a new record but was 31 times lower than that of fossil fuels.

·    Warming is accelerating, likely driven by reduced aerosol cooling, strong cloud feedbacks and declines in albedo, the reflection of sunlight back into space.

·    Ocean heat content and fire-related tree cover loss are at all-time highs. By August 2025, the European Union’s wildfire season was already the most extensive on record, with more than 1 million hectares burned.

·    Deadly and costly weather disasters surged in 2024 and 2025, with Texas flooding killing at least 135 people, Los Angeles wildfires causing damages in excess of $250 billion, and Typhoon Yagi killing more than 800 people in Southeast Asia.

·    The Atlantic Meridional Ocean Overturning Circulation, a major system of currents that helps regulate climate, is weakening and may be approaching collapse, which could trigger abrupt and irreversible climate disruptions.

·    Social tipping points can drive rapid change. Even small, sustained, nonviolent movements can shift public norms and policy.

The report warns that every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters for human and ecological well-being. Small reductions in temperature rise can significantly reduce the risk of extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and food and water insecurity. The authors emphasize that delaying action will lock in higher costs and more severe impacts, while swift, coordinated measures can yield immediate benefits for communities and ecosystems worldwide.

The report’s leading authors are William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University, with contributions by Jillian Gregg of TERA; Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania; Johan Rockström and Nico Wunderling of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Chi Xu of Nanjing University; Roberto Schaeffer of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Wendy Broadgate of Future Earth Secretariat; Thomas Newsome of the University of Sydney; Emily Shuckburgh of the University of Cambridge; and Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.

Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick is a Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and co-host of Totally Cooked: The Climate & Weather Podcast.

In addition to being involved with this report, Professor Perkins-Kirkpatrick has recently been appointed a Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Seventh Assessment Report, due out in 2029.