The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: 22 of Earth’s 34 ‘Vital Signs’ Are Flashing Red, New Report Reveals — But There’s Still Time to Act
Dear Diary. Happy Halloween one and all. Another scarry article under my ‘How Fast How Bad’ category has been written this week. This Live Science piece focuses on different aspects of tipping points that are in precarious shape because of Earth’s current fever level of about +1.3°C above preindustrial conditions due to our long-term carbon emissions.
The article also suggests that it is not too late to reverse this tipping point damage, which is true, but looking at human behavior over the past few decades, this Climate Guy has serious doubts that we as a species will reverse course:
(For great graphics that I did not repost, hit the following link.)
22 of Earth’s 34 ‘vital signs’ are flashing red, new climate report reveals — but there’s still time to act
By Sascha Pare published 10/29/2025
Earth’s systems are nearing tipping points that could plunge the planet into a “hothouse” regime — but there’s still time to prevent that from happening, scientists say.
One of the “vital signs” researchers measured was global tree cover loss due to fires, which reached a record high in 2024. (Image credit: Artur Debat/Getty Images)
Without deep cuts to emissions, there’s a chance Earth could embark on a dangerous “hothouse trajectory” to complete climate chaos. That’s one takeaway from a new report that found 22 of Earth’s 34 “vital signs” are flashing red, signaling that the planet is in distress.
Earth’s vital signs are markers of planetary health, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, ocean heat content, sea level fluctuations, and the yearly percentage of extremely hot days relative to the 1961-to-1990 average. Most of these markers hit record levels in 2024, and 2025 looks like it’s on the same trajectory, according to the report, published today (Oct. 29) in the journal BioScience.
“This report is both a warning and a call to action,” co-lead author William Ripple, a distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University, told Live Science in an email. “2024 was the hottest year ever recorded in modern times, and likely the warmest in at least 125,000 years. Ocean heat and ice loss hit record highs. Global surface temperatures exceeded 1.5 C [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] above pre-industrial levels for the first time over a 12-month period. We also saw record wildfire activity and the most widespread coral bleaching event in recent history.”
Ripple and his colleagues first laid out the framework to measure Earth’s vital signs in 2020. Five years on, the researchers warn that we could cross a series of tipping points and push the planet into a self-sustaining hothouse regime — a state where Earth continues to heat up massively even after carbon emissions drop significantly.
Earth is now 2.2 F (1.2 C) warmer than it was on average between 1850 and 1900, and if countries don’t enact any further climate policies (which is a scenario often described as the “cost of inaction”), the planet could reach up to 5.6 F (3.1 C) of warming above preindustrial levels by 2100. Such rapid change would mark a turning point in the Holocene, the stable period that Earth entered about 11,000 years ago after the last ice age, the scientists wrote in the report.
“Scholars argue that this period of relative climatic calm enabled the development of agriculture, permanent settlements, and the rise of human civilizations,” they wrote. “That stability is now giving way to a period of rapid and dangerous change.”
Soaring global temperatures considerably increase the risk of crossing climate tipping points, such as the collapse of polar ice sheets and the melting of carbon-rich permafrost. If these systems disintegrate, both the amount of solar energy that Earth bounces back to space and the quantity of carbon it can store plummet, thus locking in further warming and causing additional systems to collapse.
“Crossing one tipping point could set off a cascade of other tipping point crossings with the majority of interactions being destabilizing,” Ripple and his colleagues wrote. “In the worst case, this could push the climate system onto a hothouse Earth trajectory. This trajectory would lead to a fundamentally different planet with devastating impacts on natural systems and humanity.”
The hothouse pathway is one of the four most urgent climate risks that the researchers identified in the report. The other three are biodiversity loss; freshwater declines; and a downturn in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of ocean currents that brings heat to the Northern Hemisphere.
But, of course, these aren’t the only effects of climate change. “There are [all] sorts of consequences of warming, including ice sheet collapse, coastal inundation, the increases in extreme weather,” report co-author Michael Mann, a presidential distinguished professor and the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, told Live Science in an email.
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Global warming is proportional to the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere. Therefore, to stave off the worst consequences of climate change, “the focus should be on rapid decarbonization so we stabilize warming below dangerous levels,” Mann said.
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“Every year of delay locks in higher risks and costs,” Ripple added. “We can limit the damage if we act like this is the emergency it truly is.”
There is still time to act, because we haven’t yet reached levels of warming where the consequences are unmanageable. And there are reasons to be hopeful. “Some nations have successfully ended coal use and cut methane leaks,” Ripple said. (The U.K., Ireland, Switzerland, Norway and several other European countries no longer have coal in their electricity mix. The European Union and Nigeria have also made tangible progress in cutting methane emissions.)
“Deforestation rates in the Amazon have dropped sharply under new leadership, renewable energy capacity keeps setting records, and electric-vehicle sales are climbing,” Ripple added.
Staff writer
Sascha is a U.K.-based staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Friday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)