On 14 April, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) jointly released the 2024 edition of the European State of the Climate (ESOTC) report. According to the publication, 2024 was the warmest year on record since measurements began in 1850, surpassing 2023. These alarming findings moreover come in a complex international context, increasingly unfavourable to climate action, partly driven by the United States’ rollback of climate and clean energy policies.  

The ESOTC report notably highlights that since the 1980s, Europe has been warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, making it the fastest-warming continent on the planet. Amongst key findings, the research underscores that the annual average sea surface temperature also reached record levels, and that the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane steadily increased. In addition, extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and floods, have multiplied throughout 2024. The report, which represents the collaborative efforts of about one hundred scientists, furthers previous findings from Copernicus’ 2024 Global Climate Highlights. In parallel, preliminary findings for 2025 hint at the trend continuing this year. According to Copernicus’ latest monthly climate bulletin, March 2025 was indeed the warmest on record in Europe and the second warmest March globally.  

Recently, the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) also expressed concerns linked to climate change. Indeed, the organisation pointed out the impact of warming on oceans, with the most intense global coral bleaching event on record is still ongoing, endangering coral reefs worldwide, and indirectly a third of all known marine life relying on them. From January 2023 to March 2025, bleaching-level heat stress impacted 84% of the world’s reefs, in no less than 82 countries – numbers much higher than those experienced during the previous coral bleaching events of 1998, 2010, and 2014-2017.  

However, despite the worrying trends, climate action is increasingly being questioned globally, with one of the most notable examples being recent developments in the United States. Numerous US programmes, resources and databases related to climate are reportedly disappearing, worrying researchers who are resorting to downloads and offline copies to safeguard their work. In new policy developments, the US administration recently eliminated the position of US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate while non-profit organisations working on climate-related issues fear the end of the tax exemptions they currently benefit from. As a result of these unfavourable measures, according to a study by American think tank E2, companies have cancelled, downsized, or shut down at least 16 large-scale clean energy projects worth about $8 billion in total in the first quarter of 2025, against 18 projects between August 2022 and December 2024.  

Despite these setbacks, many countries still aim to honour their climate commitments on the international stage. Ahead of COP30, which will be hosted in Brazil later this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosted a virtual summit, bringing together 17 world leaders from major economies, Pacific islands, and developing countries in Africa, with the aim of accelerating global climate ambition. The US was notably not in attendance, but in contrast, China appeared to take an active and ambitious role, using the occasion to announce that its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) – its climate plan as per the Paris Agreement – would cover all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases. Chinese President Xi Jinping, which usually does not attend such meetings, used the occasion to slam unilateralism and protectionism in a thinly veiled attack against the Trump administration and in an attempt to position China as a stable and reliable partner.