Most of the natural systems on which climate stability and life on Earth depend have already moved beyond safe boundaries. This is the conclusion reached by the authors of the annual report on the state of the planet. No new boundaries were crossed over the past year, but conditions within the systems that had already exceeded their limits worsened. The trend can still be reversed if action is taken within the next few years, scientists emphasize.
Annual Checkup of Earth’s Condition
The Planetary Health Check 2026 report was released in September by the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab, according to a statement by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. More than 60 scientists worked on it. It is a scientific assessment and review rather than a journal article, so it did not undergo peer review.
Of the nine boundaries monitored by the authors, seven have already been crossed. They include climate change, ocean acidification, the state of the biosphere, changes in land use and freshwater systems, excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the environment, and so-called novel entities — microplastics, “forever chemicals,” and other synthetic substances.
The ozone layer in the stratosphere and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere remain within the safe range for now. At least, this is how the situation looks on a global scale.
What Are Planetary Boundaries?
The concept is used to assess how much human activity has altered the natural processes that maintained Earth’s stable climate over roughly the past 10,000 years. For each process, scientists define a control variable and a threshold value. Once that threshold is crossed, the risk of abrupt and irreversible changes that are difficult to predict increases.
The first such list was published in 2009 by a group led by Swedish researcher Johan Rockström in the journal Nature. At that time, only three of the nine boundaries were considered to have been crossed. By 2023, the number had risen to six, and in 2025 ocean acidification was added to them.
A Blood Test for the Planet
The report’s lead editor, Niklas Kitzmann, compared the boundary assessment to a blood test. In an interview with Live Science, he said that a patient with such results would immediately be sent to intensive care.
The authors marked the condition of each system using colors, like a traffic light. Green indicates a safe operating space, yellow and orange indicate increasing risk, and red corresponds to an area where serious irreversible changes are already likely. Some of the crossed boundaries fall into this dangerous category, including climate change, which, according to the data presented in the report, is accelerating.
The Consequences Are Already Visible
According to Niklas Kitzmann, heat waves around the world are becoming more frequent and more intense. Researchers are recording glacier melting, abnormal ocean warming, and mass coral bleaching.
The report separately examines the Amazon tropical forests, which are approaching a point of no return. The seafloor is being damaged by trawling, and in the future it may also be threatened by deep-sea mining.
There Is Still Time
Despite the grim assessments, the authors believe the situation can still be corrected. Niklas Kitzmann noted that the transition to renewable energy is gaining momentum as solar panels become cheaper. Public awareness is also increasing, while international agreements are already protecting oceans and land.
However, this is still not enough, the researcher acknowledged. According to him, the growth of emissions and the destruction of nature must be reversed within the next few years.
This year, the picture is complicated by an extremely powerful El Niño, the periodic warming of surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, which additionally raises global temperatures. Its impact on the status of the planetary boundaries will only be assessed in next year’s report.
