Remember being in school on “report card day”? Depending on what kind of student you were, you either loved it or you dreaded it. But one thing you could not do was ignore it. Your report card was consequential. It told you and your parents where you stood.

March 23 was report card day for our planet. The World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate 2025, the most authoritative annual assessment of where our climate stands right now. It draws on data from national meteorological services, UN partners, and dozens of scientists worldwide. It has been published every year for more than three decades.

What was most striking about it this year was how thoroughly the world’s major media outlets ignored it.

The Silence

In fairness, there is a lot going on in the world right now. But this report is directly consequential for the safety and well-being of every person on this planet. You’d think it would be headline news.

It wasn’t. The report drew some coverage, but nothing close to what a report this consequential for the future of humanity might once have commanded.

CNN’s climate reporter, in a remarkably candid piece published the same day the report came out, admitted that he almost never writes about it because it feels like a rehash. “What exactly is new here?” is the question he says he usually asks before moving on to the next assignment. And yet, he conceded, this edition “contains more detailed and disturbing information about the climate than any before.”

It’s not just this report. All climate coverage has fallen dramatically in the last four years. Global media coverage of climate change is down 47% since its peak in 2021, according to the University of Colorado’s Media and Climate Change Observatory, a multi-university collaboration that tracks climate coverage across 131 sources in 59 countries.

In the United States, climate coverage on the three major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – fell by 35% in 2025 alone, the third consecutive annual decline. Those networks aired a combined 8 hours and 25 minutes of climate coverage across the entire year. In 2022, it was 23 hours.

In Canada, the picture may be even worse. Coverage of climate change in the country’s three major national newspapers — the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the National Post — has fallen roughly 90% from its quarterly peak in 2021. In the first quarter of 2026, these three papers published a combined total of 273 articles referencing climate change — down from a quarterly average of over 2,600 in 2021.

But just because we're not paying attention to climate change doesn't mean it's not happening.

What the report says

The State of the Global Climate 2025 is not a report card you'd brag about to your parents. The findings are alarming.

New temperature record: The period from 2015 to 2025 is now the hottest 11-year stretch in recorded history. The year 2025 was the second or third warmest on record, at approximately 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels — and that was a relatively "cool" year, thanks to the temporary influence of La Niña.

Greenhouse gases reach new peaks: Atmospheric CO₂ has reached its highest concentration in at least 2 million years. Methane and nitrous oxide are at their highest levels in 800,000 years. And the annual increase in CO₂ in 2024 was the largest single-year jump since modern measurements began in 1957.

Solar energy accumulating: For the first time, the WMO is reporting on something called the Earth's energy imbalance. In a stable climate, the energy the planet receives from the sun is roughly equal to the energy it radiates back into space. That equilibrium is broken. Greenhouse gases are trapping more energy than the planet can shed, and that imbalance reached a record high in 2025, the highest in the 65-year measurement record. It is this energy, transformed into heat, that is accumulating in our climate system and is warming the planet.

Ocean temperatures rising: Where does all that excess energy go? More than 91% of it is absorbed by the ocean. Ocean heat content hit a new record in 2025, and the rate of ocean warming has more than doubled from the period 1960–2005 to the period 2005–2025. The ocean has been absorbing the equivalent of roughly 18 times total annual human energy use every year for the past two decades. Another 3% of the excess energy goes into melting ice. Just 1% warms the atmosphere directly producing the temperature we actually feel. The ocean has been shielding us from the worst of it. But it can't do that forever.

The pace of change has accelerated. Climate skeptics like to argue that the threat is exaggerated, that the scientific community has been running around like Chicken Little, screaming that the sky is falling.

The data tells the opposite story. A study published in March 2026 found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled, from approximately 0.2°C per decade over 1970–2015 to roughly 0.35°C per decade since 2015.

The lead author of the study, Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said that the finding of an acceleration of warming this drastic was "a bit unexpected."

The WMO finds further acceleration across other measures. Sea level rise has nearly doubled as well, from 2.1 mm per year in the period 1993–2002 to 4.1 mm per year between 2016 and 2025. The rate of ocean warming has more than doubled over the same period. And Earth's energy imbalance — the gap between the heat coming in and the heat escaping to space — has reached its highest level since records began in 1960.

Despite the claims of skeptics, the risks of climate change may be understated, not overstated.

A growing inventory of climate disasters

Alongside the main report, the WMO published a detailed supplement cataloguing significant weather and climate events worldwide in 2025. These voluntary reports were submitted by WMO member nations and UN agencies, including the International Organization for Migration, UNHCR, the World Food Programme, and the FAO. It is a region-by-region inventory of what climate change actually looks like when it arrives at your door.

It's not a pretty picture. The database records 402 extreme weather and climate events in 2025. Of those, 123 were categorized as unprecedented and 250 as unusual.

A few examples give a sense of the scale. Monsoon flooding in Pakistan killed over 1,000 people. Cyclone Ditwah killed 640 in Sri Lanka and destroyed over 114,000 homes. Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica with the equal-most intense landfall on record for a North Atlantic storm, causing $8.8 billion in damage, equivalent to 41% of the country's GDP. The Los Angeles wildfires caused over $60 billion in losses and displaced more than 260,000 people. South Korea experienced its largest known wildfires. Flooding in Vietnam killed over 200 and caused $1.9 billion in damage. And the list goes on — across every continent, across every kind of extreme event.

As WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo put it: "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."

Canada is not watching this from the sidelines. The supplement documents five extreme climate events that were unpredented or unusual in nature in 2025.

A widespread drought struck the country in 2025, affecting multiple provinces and territories from spring through autumn. By the end of October, roughly 84% of Canada, including 80% of its agricultural landscape, was classified as abnormally dry or in moderate to exceptional drought, with precipitation running 40–85% below normal across western and northern regions.

The 2025 wildfire season was Canada's second-worst on record, with approximately 8.3 million hectares burned over five months, displacing around 85,000 people — including 45,000 from 73 First Nation communities.

In March, a severe ice storm paralyzed Ontario and southwestern Quebec, leaving 380,000 customers without power at its peak and causing $490 million in insured losses.

In August, a thunderstorm outbreak swept a 400-kilometre path across the Prairies, producing tennis-ball-size hail, 165 km/h winds, and two tornadoes, causing $235 million in insured damage.

And in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, sea ice freeze-up was delayed by an average of four weeks - the latest on record since 1968 - leaving a deficit of roughly 225,000 km² of ice by year's end. For Indigenous and northern communities, sea ice supports how people travel, hunt, and access food.

What Now?

These are findings that should concern every one of us. They should demand action from our leaders: accelerated plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a faster transition to clean energy, and real investment in adaptation measures to protect communities from the harms we can no longer avoid.

The planet's report card is in. The grades are getting worse. And the fact that we're paying less attention, not more, may be the most troubling finding of all.