While the early 21^st century has seen dramatic changes in climate, it has also been the golden age of satellite observations of the Earth’s climate. During this period, climate has been observed from space with revolutionary detail and, in particular, climate change has been monitored in unprecedented ways. Satellite data has played a key role in weather and climate science by, among other contributions, helping to dramatically improve the accuracy of numerical weather prediction, leading to the discovery of new phenomena such as new source regions of atmospheric gravity waves, and monitoring key trends in our climate such as the increase of sea level and carbon dioxide, and the decrease of Arctic sea ice. In this presentation, some of the most significant aspects of the global climate in the 21^st century, focusing on the dramatic changes that we have been witnessing, will be briefly discussed. Three critical issues will be presented in detail as examples of areas where modern statistics and data science can potentially play a key role.