Yes, global warming is still happening, and by every major metric it is accelerating. In 2024, global surface temperature exceeded the pre-industrial average by 1.46°C, making it the warmest year in the modern record. The oceans, atmosphere, and ice sheets all confirm the same picture: Earth is gaining heat faster now than it was even a decade ago.
How We Know: Earth’s Energy Imbalance
The most fundamental measure of global warming isn’t air temperature. It’s the gap between the energy Earth absorbs from the sun and the energy it radiates back into space. In the mid-2000s, that imbalance averaged about 0.6 watts per square meter. In recent years, it has risen to roughly 1.3 watts per square meter. That means the rate at which the planet accumulates heat has doubled in about 20 years.
Most of that trapped energy ends up in the ocean. The upper 2,000 meters of the global ocean gained approximately 23 zettajoules of heat in 2025 alone, setting yet another record. Over the period from 2007 to 2025, the ocean has absorbed roughly 11 to 13 zettajoules per year, depending on the dataset. For perspective, total human energy consumption in a year is about half a zettajoule. The ocean is absorbing more than 20 times that amount annually in excess heat.
CO2 Keeps Climbing
The driver behind the energy imbalance is the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, primarily carbon dioxide. NOAA’s observatory at Mauna Loa measured atmospheric CO2 at 429.35 parts per million in February 2026, up from 427.09 ppm a year earlier. That steady climb has continued without interruption for decades and shows no sign of flattening. As long as CO2 concentrations rise, the planet will continue accumulating heat.
What the Warming Looks Like on the Surface
Surface temperatures bounce around from year to year because of natural cycles, especially the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. During El Niño phases, global temperatures spike; during La Niña phases, they dip slightly. This creates a zig-zag pattern that can make it look like warming paused if you zoom in on just a few years. But the long-term trend cuts through that noise clearly. Today’s “cool” La Niña years are warmer than the “hot” El Niño years of just a few decades ago. The natural cycle hasn’t stopped; it’s just riding on top of a rising baseline.
The 2024 record of 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels came on the heels of a strong El Niño that boosted temperatures in late 2023 and early 2024. Even as conditions shifted toward neutral and La Niña territory later in the year, temperatures remained extraordinarily high.
The Arctic Is Warming Four Times Faster
Not all parts of the planet warm at the same rate. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the global average since 1979, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Earlier estimates put the ratio at two or three times faster, but observational data now supports a ratio closer to four. This amplified warming drives rapid sea ice loss, thaws permafrost, and disrupts weather patterns far beyond the Arctic itself.
Greenland’s ice sheet lost an average of 266 billion metric tons of ice per year between 2002 and 2023. The 2024 season was a relatively mild year for Greenland, with losses of about 55 billion metric tons, but that still represents a net loss. Year after year, the ice sheet shrinks, and the meltwater flows into the ocean.
Sea Levels Are Rising Faster
Melting ice sheets and the thermal expansion of warming seawater both push sea levels higher. For most of the 20th century, global sea level rose at about 1.4 millimeters per year. From 2006 to 2015, that rate jumped to 3.6 millimeters per year, a 2.5-fold acceleration. That may sound small in annual terms, but it compounds. Coastal communities are already seeing more frequent flooding during high tides and storms that would have stayed within bounds a generation ago.
Extreme Weather Is Getting Worse
Warming doesn’t just raise averages. It loads the dice for extreme events. In 2024, climate change added an estimated 41 extra days of dangerous heat globally, days when temperatures crossed thresholds that threaten human health. Of the 16 major floods studied by the World Weather Attribution initiative that year, 15 were intensified by climate-amplified rainfall.
Hurricanes are strengthening too. An analysis of 38 Atlantic hurricanes between 2019 and 2023 found that 30 of them had wind speeds pushed one full category higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale because of human-caused warming. A storm that would have been a Category 2 arrived as a Category 3. In the western Pacific, the risk of multiple intense typhoons striking the Philippines in a single year is increasing as oceans warm.
Why People Still Ask the Question
The question “is global warming still happening?” tends to resurface during cooler stretches or after a particularly cold winter in a specific region. Local weather and global climate operate on different scales. A cold snap in one city tells you nothing about the planet’s energy balance. The metrics that matter, ocean heat content, atmospheric CO2, ice mass, sea level, all point in the same direction and have for decades. None of them have paused, reversed, or even slowed in a sustained way. The planet is warming, and every year the evidence grows more emphatic.