Each year, leading scientists from around the world review the most pressing findings in climate change-related research. Summarized into 10 concise insights, this year's report responds to clear calls for policy guidance during this climate-critical decade.
The annual series is jointly developed by Future Earth, The Earth League, and the World Climate Research Programme, involving more than 80 researchers from 45 countries.
While the report was released in the lead-up to this year's COP29, the relevance of its findings and recommendations extends well beyond the climate negotiations in Baku, providing a snapshot of critical climate change-related developments that the world must watch out for in 2025 (and thereafter).
"This report confirms that the world faces planetary scale challenges...yet it also provides clear pathways and solutions, demonstrating that with urgent, decisive action, we still can avoid unmanageable outcomes",
says Johan Rockström, Swedish climate scientist, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and member of the 2024/2025 report's Editorial Board.
The 10 Insights at a glance:
- Methane levels are surging. Enforceable policies for emission reductions are essential.
- Reductions in air pollution have implications for mitigation and adaptation given complex aerosol-climate interactions.
- Increasing heat is making more of the planet uninhabitable.
- Climate extremes are harming maternal and reproductive well-being.
- Concerns about El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) with an increasingly warm ocean.
- Biocultural diversity can bolster the Amazon’s resilience against climate change.
- Critical infrastructure is increasingly exposed to climate hazards, with risk of cascading disruption across interconnected networks.
- New frameworks for climate-resilient development in cities provide decision-makers with ideas for unlocking co-benefits.
- Closing governance gaps in the energy transition minerals global value chain is crucial for a just and equitable energy transition.
- Public’s acceptance of (or resistance to) climate policies crucially depends on perceptions of fairness.
This text is based on different sections of the report. The full publication can be accessed here.
Photo credit: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr.