Rising emissions have locked-in future climate impacts, scale of damage depends on action now – 10 new insights

Published today, the report warns how overshooting 1.5°C of warming carries rapidly escalating risks of irreversible impacts for oceans, glaciers, and permafrost, with consequences for livelihoods and economic activity for decades to come.

“The evidence is unequivocal: 1.5°C is a limit that we cross at our own risk. Beyond it, the risks of cascading and potentially irreversible climate impacts increase, with every additional tenth of a degree making them more severe,” said PIK director Johan Rockström, co-chair of The Earth League and a member of the report’s editorial board.

A joint initiative of Future Earth, The Earth League, and the World Climate Research Programme, the report highlights how some sea-level rise is already irreversible due to past emissions, but that the ultimate magnitude still depends strongly on how quickly the world cuts greenhouse gases.

“The ocean has been our planet’s shock absorber. Because heat takes decades to penetrate ocean depths, today's emissions effectively lock in further warming and sea level rise,” said Wendy Broadgate, Global Hub Director at Future Earth and a member of the report’s editorial board. “Deep, rapid emissions cuts are the only way to limit these risks.”

The report also focuses on advances in attribution science which allow researchers to link emissions from specific countries, companies and sectors to specific climate impacts. This emerging evidence base is already being used to strengthen litigation, inform loss-and-damage negotiations and sharpen debates over responsibility and finance.

Taken together, the 10 insights point to a narrowing window for action but one that is still open, showing us what is already locked in, what can still be avoided, and where policy can have the greatest effect.

10 climate science 10 insights of 2026/2027: 

1. Ocean heat uptake: The ocean continues to absorb record amounts of heat, locking in further warming for years to come and increasing climate risks. Deep emissions cuts are critical to stop this. 

2. Accelerating sea-level rise: Melting glaciers and ice sheets are driving rising seas. Some change is already irreversible, but rapid mitigation can still limit future rise. 

3. Continental drying: Climate change and growing water use are causing the rapid loss of freshwater across continents, threatening water security, ecosystems, and food production. 

4. Impacts of overshooting 1.5°C: The further warming rises above 1.5°C, and the longer it stays there, the greater the risk of irreversible impacts and the more emissions cuts, carbon removal, and adaptation will be required. 

5. Food systems are key levers: Transforming food systems, particularly through more plant-rich diets, can deliver major benefits for climate, biodiversity, and health, but must be done carefully and fairly. 

6. The true social cost of carbon: The economic damages caused by carbon emissions are substantially higher than previously estimated, and every extra ton of CO₂ carries additional risk. 

7. Attributing climate impacts to emitters: Advances in attribution science now allow linking the emissions from specific actors to specific climate impacts, strengthening the evidence available for accountability, litigation and loss and damage. 

8. Fair and effective climate clubs: Linking climate action to trade measures can encourage decarbonization, but the same measures may also impose disproportionate costs and challenges on developing economies. 

10. Climate obstruction: Intentional efforts to delay climate action have evolved from science denial toward subtler tactics, including greenwashing, misleading solutions, and spreading digital disinformation at scale.
11. Geopolitics and the energy transition: Geopolitical instability can accelerate the clean-energy transition for some countries, while deepening fossil-fuel reliance for others, with growing risks of an unequal global transition.

About the report

Produced by a global team of leading scientists and experts, the “10 New Insights in Climate Science” synthesises the most critical advances in climate research from the past 18 months. The report strives to be a trusted source of evidence-based information on the most pressing findings in climate research.