Inside Climate News: Report Shows Earth’s Climate is Out of Balance, as Indicators Hit New Extremes

The State of the Global Climate report highlights the significance of record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. For the first time, it includes a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance as a key climate indicator, measuring the rate at which energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet. In a stable climate, incoming energy and outgoing energy are about the same. But activities such as burning fossil fuels, growing food and making steel, cement and plastic have upset that balance by pushing levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to the highest level in at least 800,000 years. That’s trapping more of the sun’s energy in the Earth’s climate system than ever previously recorded. Vital DETAILS.