Long Story Short

Our planet is wrapped in a layer of air so thin that, on a schoolroom globe, it would be no thicker than a coat of varnish. In that fragile skin, every breath and every storm we have ever known is held. For most of the last two thousand years it kept the world near a steady temperature. Then, with the industrial revolution, we humans began to burn coal, oil, and gas, and to clear the forests at a scale and pace the planet had never seen, and we left that steadiness behind: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that had held between 180 and 300 parts per million for 800,000 years now stands at 427.

The warming followed the carbon. The warming we have caused now stands at 1.38 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, an all-time high, climbing about 0.27 °C each decade. Observed temperature swings around that line. It spiked to 1.5 °C in the 2024 El Niño, then eased to about 1.37 °C, and as another El Niño gathers it will rise again. But the human-caused warming beneath only climbs.

Warming is not just a number on a chart. It is extra energy trapped near the surface, day after day, and that energy has to go somewhere. It feeds heatwaves and wildfires, deepens droughts and floods, lends storms their strength, melts the ice, and warms and acidifies the seas, which have already risen some 23 cm since 1900. Whole species are pushed from the ranges they have always known, faster than they can follow, and with them the harvests and fresh water that billions of people depend upon. A degree, spread across a whole planet, is never small.

None of this is fate. The carbon budget for holding 1.5 °C is almost gone, yet the path is known: emissions must fall to net zero, near 1.5 °C by about 2032, near 1.7 °C by 2050. We changed the climate without meaning to, and we can change it back on purpose. So far as we know, this is the only world that has ever borne life, and no one is coming to save it for us. The task is large, but it is ours, and there is still time to choose.

To choose well, we have to see clearly. That is what Climate Change Tracker is for.