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Impacts from a climate event can cascade through natural, anthropogenic and socio-economic systems. Here the authors assess cascading climate impacts on the EU and identify intervention points for adaptation related to water, livelihoods, agriculture, infrastructure and economy, and violent conflict.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

Impact models projections are used in integrated assessments of climate change. Here the authors test systematically across many important systems, how well such impact models capture the impacts of extreme climate conditions.

An analysis of data from the Sherlock-Lung study provides insight into the mutational processes that contribute to lung cancer in never smokers, and looks at the possible role of factors such as air pollution and passive smoking.

E-fuels—hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from green hydrogen—can replace fossil fuels. This Perspective highlights the opportunities and risks of e-fuels, and concludes that hydrogen and e-fuels should be prioritized for sectors inaccessible to direct electrification.

Exposure to extreme weather events could increase environmental concerns and support for Green parties. With high-resolution data across European countries, the authors demonstrate the existence of such effect, then further discuss the heterogeneity and possible mechanisms.

Temporarily exceeding temperature targets could increase risk of crossing tipping-element thresholds. This study considers a range of overshoot scenarios in a stylized network model and shows that overshoots increase tipping risks by up to 72% compared with remaining within targets.

There is a mismatch between emission estimates from global land use calculated from IAMs and countries’ greenhouse gas inventories. This study presents a method for reconciling these estimates by reallocating part of the land-use sink, facilitating progress assessment towards climate goals.

Current action is insufficient to meet both the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Integrated model-based analysis shows that strong interventions across many dimensions, together with ambitious lifestyle change, are needed to enable real progress towards the UN Agenda 2030.

Coal use is responsible for a large proportion of climate damages. This study shows that phasing out coal yields substantial near-term, local environmental and health benefits that outweigh direct policy costs, providing incentives for immediate climate action.

The societal response to the pandemic has reduced global power demand, disproportionally affecting coal power generation and thus leading to a strong CO₂ emissions decline. Policy should apply 2020’s lessons to ensure that power sector emissions have peaked in 2018 and go into structural decline.

Current emissions scenarios include pathways that overshoot the temperature goals set out in the Paris Agreement and rely on future net negative emissions. Limiting overshoot would require near-term investment but would result in longer-term economic benefit.

With the development of carbon emission allowance markets worldwide, concerns that they could attract excessive speculation have also grown. This Perspective discusses the potential scale and impacts of financial trading, as well as approaches to improve carbon market monitoring and oversight.

Bioenergy has been widely viewed as an alternative for fossil fuels and an option for carbon dioxide removal, but there are doubts given the induced land-use changes. This study shows the importance of uniform regulation and comprehensive coverage of carbon-rich areas in reducing total emissions.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is currently strong, but transition to its weak mode could see significant changes in the climate system. This work presents an observation-based early-warning system for such transitions and shows that the AMOC may be approaching a transition.

Climate change and economic inequality are critical issues, and we still lack understanding of the interaction between them. Multi-model analysis shows how climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, including revenue-redistribution schemes, can reduce inequality—particularly in the short and medium terms.

The Paris Agreement requires reaching net-zero carbon emissions, but a debate exists on how fast this can be achieved. This study establishes scenarios with different feasibility constraints and finds that the institutional dimension plays a key role for determining the feasible peak temperature.

Net-zero pledges are emerging around the world, but to be consequential they must compel credibility as a core objective of climate policy design. This paper proposes an approach, named backward induction, that aims to maximize policy credibility by balancing building commitment and cost efficiency.

Under current land-use regulation, carbon dioxide emissions from biofuel production exceed those from fossil diesel combustion. Therefore, international agreements need to ensure the effective and globally comprehensive protection of natural land before modern bioenergy can effectively contribute to achieving carbon neutrality.

Use of an enhanced suite of marine ecosystem models and Earth system model outputs from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) reveals greater decline in mean global ocean animal biomass than previously projected under both strong-mitigation and high-emissions scenarios.

The objective of the Paris climate agreement is to limit global-average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to further pursue limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius; here, the adequacy of the national plans submitted in preparation for this agreement is assessed, and it is concluded that substantial enhancement or over-delivery on these plans is required to have a reasonable chance of achieving the Paris climate objective.

Mitigation pathways allowing for temperature overshoot often ignore the related climate and macroeconomic impacts. Net-zero pathways with limited overshoot could reduce low-probability high-consequence risks and economic loss.

Uncertainty in estimates of the economic impacts of climate change makes it difficult to evaluate the benefits of mitigation. This Perspective reviews methods for determining economic damages from biophysical impacts, highlights critical gaps and suggests priorities moving forward.