Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

6 March 2025

February 2025 highlights:

• February 2025 was the third warmest February globally, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 13.36°C, 0.63°C above the 1991-2020 average for February, and only marginally warmer, by 0.03°C, than the fourth warmest of 2020.

• February 2025 was 1.59°C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level and was the 19th month in the last 20 months for which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.

• The average temperature over European land for February 2025 was 0.44°C, 0.40°C above the 1991-2020 average for February, ranking it well outside the 10 warmest months of February for Europe.

• The average sea surface temperature (SST) for February 2025 over 60°S–60°N was 20.88°C, the second-highest value on record for the month, 0.18°C below the February 2024 record.

• Arctic sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent for February, at 8% below average. This marks the third consecutive month in which the sea ice extent has set a record for the corresponding month.

• In February 2025, Europe saw predominantly below-average precipitation; this coincided with below-average surface soil moisture in much of central and eastern Europe, south-eastern Spain and Türkiye.

Key messages

Key climate change indicators again reach record levels

Long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains below 1.5°C

Sea-level rise and ocean warming irreversible for hundreds of years

Record greenhouse gas concentrations combined with El Niño and other factors to drive 2024 record heat

Early warnings and climate services are vital to protect communities and economies

Legal Tools to Hold Financiers Accountable
2025

The urgency of the climate catastrophe demands strong and effective responses. With fossil fuels driving over 75% of global CO2 emissions, we need to hold accountable those who still finance their expansion, harming us and future generations.

This publication helps to empower people of faith and partners in WCC’s global constituency with the knowledge for legal action. It provides a menu of strategies particularly aimed at financial institutions, one of the most powerful levers to accelerate climate solutions. It is a call to answer the pleas of the scientific community and young people to tackle the root causes of harm to creation and protect future generation’s right to life.

There were no extreme heatwaves last year...

We do not have the luxury of rejecting solutions before we have thoroughly investigated their risks, trade-offs and feasibility

As a lifelong scientist, I have always believed that if something is possible, we can find a way to achieve it. And yet, one of the starkest realities we now face is that the world is failing to meet its climate goals. Last year marked a historic and deeply troubling threshold: for the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Without drastic and immediate climate action, this breach will not be temporary. The consequences – rising sea levels, extreme weather and devastating loss of biodiversity – are no longer projections for the distant future. They are happening now, affecting millions of lives, and likely to cause trillions in damages in decades to come.

But we must think beyond our immediate horizons. When I read The Iliad, I am reminded that it was written 2,800 years ago. I often wonder: in another 2,800 years, what will people – if humanity as we know it still exists – read about our time? Will they see us as the generation that failed to act or one that made the choices necessary to safeguard the planet for the future?

We must act with this longterm perspective in mind. Scientists agree we need to bring greenhouse gas levels down to below 350 parts per million by the end of this century to ensure a liveable planet for future generations. Achieving this will require a four-pronged approach: reduce, remove, repair and resilience.

Reduction – cutting emissions rapidly and deeply – of course remains a critical priority. But we must also pursue the removal of excess carbon, explore repair techniques to stabilise key ecosystems and build resilience against the escalating impacts we are already experiencing.

One of the greatest challenges of climate science today is that many of the necessary levers to regain control are uncomfortable, even controversial. Ideas such as thickening sea ice to prevent collapse or brightening marine clouds to reflect sunlight may once have seemed extreme. Yet, as we contend with an escalating crisis, we must at least explore these possibilities. We do not have the luxury of rejecting solutions outright before we have thoroughly investigated their risks, trade-offs and feasibility.

As scientists, we must never advocate for deploying unproven interventions. Any repair or removal techniques must undergo rigorous research and assessment before we evaluate full-scale suitability. However, we must also be clear: these investigations must happen with urgency. The longer we delay, the fewer options remain on the table and the more likely that deployment will happen without the proper due diligence at a point of desperation.

Privately, many scientists acknowledge the need to advance research into these solutions, but there is a widespread reluctance to say so publicly. I understand this trepidation – some fear backlash, while others worry about giving ammunition to those who would use climate repair as an excuse to delay emissions reductions. There are also many who object on ethical, political or environmental grounds, often for entirely understandable reasons. We must respect these concerns and ensure that any research is conducted transparently, with input from affected communities and with the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous rights-holders.

Yet, my question remains: if not now, then when? The climate crisis is worsening before our eyes. We cannot afford to remain silent on the necessity of responsible research into nature-based climate repair. We must explore these approaches as part of a holistic climate response, not in place of deep emissions reductions, but as a complement to them.

I commend the advocacy groups, scientists and policy leaders who have already broken their silence. Groups such as Operaatio Arktis, Ocean Visions and the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering are fostering open and inclusive dialogue about what responsible research should look like. It is time for more of us to speak up.

Throughout history, scientific breakthroughs have changed the course of humanity when leaders and communities worked together to act on the evidence before them. The Montreal protocol successfully phased out CFCs after the discovery of the ozone hole. Decades of renewable energy research have made solar and wind the cheapest power sources globally. We have faced existential challenges before and found solutions – because people were willing to pursue bold, responsible action.

Today, we face an even greater challenge. We must advance research into climate repair urgently, transparently and with the utmost scientific and ethical rigour. To do so, we must use our voices, collectively and courageously, before the choices are no longer ours to make.

Professor Sir David King is the head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. For more than 60 years, he has been a scientist and vocal advocate for acting on climate change. He has served as the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, the foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change and the head of the University of Cambridge’s chemistry department.

Donald Trump is taking aim and city- and state-led fossil fuel accountability efforts, which have been hailed as a last source of hope for the climate amid the president’s ferociously anti-environment agenda.

In a Tuesday executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws, which his administration has suggested are unconstitutional or otherwise unenforceable.

The president called out New York and Vermont, both of which have passed “climate superfund” laws requiring major fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from extreme weather.

“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the executive order says. “They should not stand.”

He also targeted the dozens of lawsuits brought by states, cities and counties against big oil in recent years, accusing the industry of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products and seeking compensation for climate impacts.

The move left advocates outraged.

“This order is an illegal, disgusting attempt to force everyday people to pay for the rising toll of climate disasters, while shielding the richest people in the world from accountability,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.

The new order came as Trump touted new moves to revive the coal, the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel.

It also followed a March meeting at the White House where fossil fuel executives reportedly lobbied Trump to give them immunity from climate litigation. Days earlier, 200 environmental, consumer advocacy and social justice groups had urged top congressional Democrats to block attempts from big oil to gain legal immunity, the Guardian reported.

Oil interests applauded the new move from the president. “Directing the Department of Justice to address this state overreach will help restore the rule of law and ensure activist-driven campaigns do not stand in the way of ensuring the nation has access to an affordable and reliable energy supply,” Ryan Meyers, the senior vice-president of top US fossil fuel lobby group American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement.

But advocates say the order is an an anti-democratic attack on municipalities’ climate action, which serve a crucial role in counterbalancing Trump’s anti-environmental agenda.

“Make no mistake: this executive order isn’t about energy independence or economic security – it’s about ensuring billionaire polluters never have to face a jury of ordinary Americans,” said Cassidy DiPaola, the communications director of Make Polluters Pay, which backs the climate superfund laws. “The American people deserve better than a government that protects polluters’ profits over people’s lives.”

Fossil fuel companies poured $96m into Trump’s re-election campaign and affiliated political action committees, as he pledged to roll back environmental regulations and loosen regulations on the industry. This was slightly less than the $1bn Trump requested from the sector in an infamous meeting at his Mar-a-Lago club last spring, but still constituted record levels of spending.

Trump pledged to attack climate lawsuits, which he has called “frivolous”, on the campaign trail. And during his first term, his administration filed influential briefs in the cases supporting the oil companies.

But environmental lawyers question the validity of the new executive order.

“This illegal and unconstitutional order panders to the biggest polluters on the planet and shows Trump’s utter hypocrisy on states’ rights,” said Jason Rylander, the legal director of the climate law institute at the conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity. “Trying to sic the justice department on state officials who are protecting their people from pollution will fail because the US attorney general has no power to declare state laws illegal.”

In recent months, rightwing groups have launched campaigns attempting to shield oil companies from city and state climate accountability. Some have ties to Leonard Leo, who is known as a force behind the Federalist Society, which orchestrated the ultraconservative takeover of the American judiciary and helped select Trump’s supreme court justice picks.

A truck parked outside a major fossil fuel conference last month in Houston warned that city and state policies and lawsuits “are threatening America’s pro-consumer energy dominance”, linking to an op-ed from a group with links to Leo. The new executive order echoes this sentiment, saying the litigation and laws “threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security”.