The warming of Earth's atmosphere is directly linked to the concentration of greenhouse gases present in it. The more carbon dioxide and methane envelop the Planet, the more the radiative effect (the absorption of solar radiation) intensifies. However, there is another, less well-known indicator that has been cited repeatedly in recent months, including by the World Meteorological Organization, and that is particularly alarming climatologists: the "energy imbalance".

Peter D Carter ✓ @PCarterClimate

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2025 RECORD RAPIDLY ACCELERATING EARTH ENERGY IMBALANCE
EEI is the global standard in assessing global climate change, as James Hansen has been explaining for many years.
This is a most dire Earth emergency.
The EEI trend is global suicide, which is being ignored
(Copernicus

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Known by the acronym EEI, Earth's Energy Imbalance, it enables a better understanding of the overall state of the climate system by measuring the difference between the amount of energy entering Earth's atmosphere and that which leaves it. The second value is essentially determined by the Planet's capacity to reflect part of the sun's rays and by the infrared radiation it emits.

Earth's energy imbalance is greater than expected

The underlying concept is simple: if the first figure exceeds the second, the share of received energy progressively transforms into heat and contributes to raising the global average temperature. The data are collected through satellite observations and measured in watts per square metre. And they indicate that the imbalance is more pronounced than scientists themselves had anticipated.

Already a study published in 2025 — involving, among others, research institutes and universities from Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Switzerland and Germany — explained that over the past twenty years the figure has risen from 0.6 to 1.3 watts per square metre. In other words, the amount of heat absorbed is twice as great as it was at the end of the last century. A figure that — and this is the reason for the alarm — should lead to global warming even more pronounced than projected.

Global warming at 1.37 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels

Meanwhile, humanity continues unrelentingly to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: on 11 June, another analysis involving an international consortium of 73 scientists confirmed that the rate of accumulation is "unprecedented". "For the fourth consecutive year," the authors wrote, "planetary-scale data have been updated, and the results indicate that the level of planetary warming attributable to human activities has now reached 1.37 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period." At the same time, despite promises, global conferences and agreements, worldwide greenhouse gas emissions have reached yet another record level: 56.8 billion tonnes released in a single year, 2024 — fully three quarters of which are directly attributable to the burning of fossil fuels.

Peter D Carter ✓ @PCarterClimate

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ACCELERATING EARTH ENERGY IMBALANCE (EEI)
2025 EEI is double 2005 here. Published: EEI has doubled in recent years. In 2023, the imbalance reached a new record high, twice that of the IPCC best estimate. EEI is a direct measure of how much extra energy is being trapped in the

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The same study underlines that "the Earth's energy imbalance is a fundamental indicator for understanding the pace of climate change". And the data show that "it has been increasing since the 1970s" of the last century: "This heat accumulation," the analysis continues, "is the driver of global warming and affects every aspect of the climate system: it raises the average air temperature at the surface of land and oceans (both at the surface and at depth), causing the melting of ice sheets and alpine glaciers." This in turn leads to rising sea levels, the submersion of coastal areas, economic losses and mass migration.

Energy imbalance between 1960 and 2020 at 0.8 watts per square metre

Another international scientific paper published in 2023 analysed trends between 1960 and 2020, concluding that the imbalance is real and growing: in the energy budget, the energy that entered during the analysed period through solar irradiance amounted to approximately 340 watts per square metre; the energy that left was 339.7 watts. The energy imbalance was therefore approximately 0.8 watts.

The majority of this excess energy is absorbed by the oceans (around 89 per cent), with the remainder taken up by land surfaces, the melting of the cryosphere and the atmosphere itself. The result is the climate crisis we are living through.