Item

Abstract

The impacts of climate change continue to increase, with global temperatures rising and extreme weather events becoming increasingly frequent and severe. Up until 2024, human activities have caused the world to warm by approximately 1.36°C relative to pre-industrial levels. Earth System Models (ESMs) represent physical processes in the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, and land, as well as the interactions between them. Though imperfect, they are a key tool to understanding the causes, consequences, and potential responses to climate change. This briefing draws on work from six projects: ESM2025, ClimTip, TipESM, OptimESM, nextGEMS, and RESCUE. All six projects conduct policy-relevant climate change research using ESMs, in particular in relation to the Paris Agreement, as described in Box 1. In this briefing we first summarise some of the new research insights of these projects that help us understand: i. how to track real-world progress in warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon budgets; ii. expected future warming and the potential of measures to reduce concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and iii. the stability of global and regional climates. We then identify key research gaps that must be filled to predict future pathways and identify effective and efficient responses to climate change.