Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast – and the rate has doubled in 20 years

June 30, 2025

• Steven Sherwood

  Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

• Benoit Meyssignac

  Associate Research Scientist in Climate Science, Université de Toulouse

• Thorsten Mauritsen

How do you measure climate change? One way is by recording temperatures in different places over a long period of time. While this works well, natural variation can make it harder to see longer-term trends.

But another approach can give us a very clear sense of what’s going on: track how much heat enters Earth’s atmosphere and how much heat leaves. This is Earth’s energy budget, and it’s now well and truly out of balance.

Ice and reflective clouds reflect heat back to space. As the Earth heats up, most trapped heat goes into the oceans but some melts ice and heats the land and air. Pictured: Icebergs from the Jacobshavn glacier in Greenland, the largest outside Antarctica. Ashley Cooper/Getty