Planetary Health Check
Seven breached Planetary Boundaries continue to worsen, new report shows
Firefighters from Cheshire Fire and Rescue service work to tackle a large moorland fire near Errwood Reservoir in the Goyt Valley, near Buxton in the Peak District. Derbyshire, England. 3rd May 2025.
The Earth system is under strain, according to the latest Planetary Health Check. Seven of the nine Planetary Boundaries are now at their highest recorded levels of transgression.
The report comes after months marked by extremes across land and oceans: record ocean heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme heat.
- Seven of the nine Planetary Boundaries are now at their highest recorded levels of transgression
- Only the stratospheric ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosol loading boundaries have shown improvement over the last decade
- The risk of large-scale, persistent and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking, according to the authors
“We do not have the luxury of time, but we do have the knowledge, capacity and solutions to change course. Accelerating action to return to the safe operating space across all Planetary Boundaries is essential to protect lives and livelihoods, and to deliver on the promise of shared future prosperity,” said Centre co-founder Johan Rockström, PIK Director and co-author of the report.
We do not have the luxury of time, but we do have the knowledge, capacity and solutions to change course.
Centre co-founder Johan Rockström
The Planetary Health Check is an annual stocktaking of the Planetary Boundaries, the framework which was established at the Stockholm Resilience Centre more than 15 years ago. The Planetary Boundaries describe the interconnected Earth-system processes that must remain within safe limits to preserve the planet’s stability and resilience.
This year’s update is authored by more than 60 scientists, including Centre researchers Johan Rockström, Jonathan Donges, Axel Eriksson, and Ingo Fetzer, and produced by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The seven transgressed boundaries are: climate change, change in biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities and ocean acidification. Only the stratospheric ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosol loading boundaries have shown improvement over the last decade. However, the authors caution that global progress may mask unsafe aerosol levels persisting in some regions.
A year of extreme events
The report comes after a year of extremes. Human-caused warming intensified several major weather extremes, while degraded ecosystems, water stress, land-use change, exposure and social vulnerability often magnified their impacts.
“The diagnosis is unambiguous. Pressure is rising across every Planetary Boundary already outside the safe operating space. It means that the risk of large-scale, persistent and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking,” commented Boris Sakschewski, PIK scientist and lead author of the report.
Pakistan’s 2025 monsoon floods affected more than 6.9 million people. Global ocean heat content reached a new record in 2025, with Hurricane Melissa rapidly ramping up to a Category 5 Hurricane and striking Jamaica after passing over exceptionally warm seas. January 2023 to September 2025 saw bleaching-level heat stress impacting approximately 84.4 percent of the world’s coral reef area, making it the largest global coral-bleaching event observed to date.
In 2026, Western Europe experienced its hottest June-July period on record, accompanied by drought across France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, with major wildfires across Europe and Canada. Record-breaking heat was also recorded in Japan, South Korea and parts of the Middle East.
The Planetary Health Check has been developed by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) together with international experts, including Centre researchers Johan Rockström, Jonathan Donges, Axel Eriksson, and Ingo Fetzer.
Read the full report here:
Use of AI in this web news
The creation of this web news has been supported by the use of generative AI. We use AI tools to help edit, draft and spellcheck parts of our web news. The final text has been read and approved by one of the researchers behind the original study.
Read more about how we use AI in communications »
-
.png)
Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached
A major new scientific review, “Planetary Health Check 2025”, shows that seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been exceeded. For the first time, this also includes the boundary for ocean acidification. This means that several of Earth’s life-supporting systems risk crossing critical thresholds, with severe consequences for both ecosystems and societies.
-
New quantifications: Planetary Boundaries in the future
A new study explores three potential future scenarios and finds that, under current trends and policies, the situation is projected to worsen across all planetary boundaries by 2050, except for ozone depletion. But targeted interventions and ambitious policy measures can reduce the negative effects and steer humanity toward more sustainable futures.
.png)
