Seven of Earth's 16 vital signs are at record extremes. The data behind the 2026 State of the Climate report

The 2026 State of the Climate report, published in the journal BioScience on 14 October, tracks 16 "planetary vital signs", from greenhouse gas levels to ice sheets and sea level.^1,2 Seven are now at record extremes. "We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth's climate system," said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-led the report with Christopher Wolf of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates.²

This is the seventh annual edition of the report.³ Its message is not only a warning. It also records progress that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago, and it names three measures that can be scaled up quickly. Greenly went to the public datasets behind its headline numbers to show what they look like over time.

The scorecard

The report's 16 vital signs, grouped by what the latest data shows.^1,3 "Record" means the most extreme value in that indicator's record; "worsening" means the long-term trend is moving in the wrong direction.

Carbon dioxide: a record set every year

The report puts carbon dioxide above 428 parts per million (ppm) in May 2026, about 50% above pre-industrial levels and generally higher than at any time in the last two million years.² The longest continuous measurement, at the US government's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, shows the same story in finer detail (Figure 1). Its monthly average reached 432.3 ppm in May 2026, the highest in 68 years of records.⁴ The zigzag is the seasons: CO₂ dips each northern summer as forests grow, and climbs again in winter.

The rise is also getting faster. In the 1960s, CO₂ at Mauna Loa rose by an average of less than 1 ppm a year. In 2023 and 2024 it rose by more than 3.3 ppm, the two fastest increases on record (Figure 2).⁴ The four fastest years, 2024, 2023, 2016 and 1998, all came during El Niño events, when drought and fire reduce how much carbon tropical forests absorb. Another very strong El Niño is under way now: see Greenly's analysis of the 2026 El Niño.

Warming is speeding up

The report finds that global surface temperature rose by about 0.05°C per decade between 1880 and 1970, about 0.19°C per decade between 1970 and 2010, and about 0.36°C per decade from 2010 to 2024, roughly double the previous rate (Figure 3).^2,3 "At current rates, 2°C above pre-industrial levels could be reached before 2050," the authors write.²

Ice and oceans

Four of the seven records are in the oceans and the ice. Greenland's ice sheet has lost about 6,000 gigatonnes of mass, and worldwide glacier thickness is at a record low.³ Antarctica has lost more than 2,500 gigatonnes. Ocean heat content is at a record high and rising at an accelerating rate, and global sea level is more than 7 centimetres above its 1993 average. Both ocean records are based on preliminary data.^2,3

The oceans are also becoming more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide, with average surface pH down to 8.050.³ Earth's energy imbalance, the gap between the energy arriving from the Sun and the energy leaving, is trending up, while the planet's albedo, the share of sunlight it reflects, is trending down.³ In short, the Earth is holding on to more heat each year.

Arctic sea ice is the one indicator with a mixed picture. Its summer minimum is trending down over the long term, but it has stayed at roughly 4 to 5 million square kilometres since 2010.³

Disasters and tipping points

The report lists recent disasters that it says were "at least partly attributable to climate change."²

The authors warn that faster warming raises the risk of crossing tipping points, where parts of the climate system shift into a new state that is hard or impossible to reverse. They point to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the ocean current system that carries warm water north through the Atlantic, and to the Amazon, where "the combined effects of warming and deforestation could push it past an irreversible threshold." The report places that threshold at 1.5–1.9°C of warming.² The burden falls unevenly: "the communities least responsible for historical emissions, particularly in the Global South and small island states" are "bearing disproportionately severe and early consequences."²

The turning point in electricity

The report's most hopeful finding is in the power sector. In 2025, "renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydropower, and other renewables) have surpassed coal globally."² Global electricity data shows the crossover clearly (Figure 4). Renewables generated 10,726 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, compared with 10,472 TWh from coal. Solar and wind together grew 18%, and low-carbon sources, renewables plus nuclear, supplied 42.6% of the world's electricity.⁵

But clean power is being added on top of fossil fuels, not instead of them. Global oil, coal and gas consumption rose 0.9% in 2025, with all three at record highs, and energy-related CO₂ emissions passed 41 billion tonnes for the first time.² The report says renewable expansion "was insufficient to displace fossil fuel consumption."² Since 1965, fossil fuel use has fallen only during major shocks, such as the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s, the 2009 financial crash and the 2020 pandemic, and each time it went on to new highs (Figure 5).⁶

"The challenge now," Ripple told Eos, "is getting them deployed fast enough to actually reduce fossil fuel consumption."³

Three fast-track measures

Alongside deep emissions cuts and rapid adaptation, the report names three measures that can be scaled up quickly.² Each connects to work featured on Greenly.

Nico Wunderling, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who was not involved in the report, told Eos that its "worrying negative trends" "need to be watched closely," but called the scale and speed of its solutions "particularly encouraging."³ The authors end on the same balance: "the future trajectory of both the climate system and human societies has not yet been fully determined."²