The 10 New Insights initiative aims to identify recent advances in climate-change research across the natural and social sciences, prioritize a set of 10, and synthesize them on a yearly basis: more frequently than can be done by large assessments, and more accessible than common academic synthesis or review papers. This scientific publication presents this year’s 10 New Insights in Climate Science, elaborated in the report.
The years 2023 and 2024 were characterized by unprecedented warming across the globe, underscoring the urgency of climate action. Robust science advice for decision makers on subjects as complex as climate change requires deep cross- and interdisciplinary understanding. However, navigating the ever-expanding and diverse peer-reviewed literature on climate change is enormously challenging for individual researchers. The initiative elicited expert input through an online questionnaire (188 respondents from 45 countries) and prioritized 10 key advances in climate-change research with high policy relevance. The insights span a wide range of areas, from changes in methane and aerosol emissions to the factors shaping citizens’ acceptance of climate policies. This synthesis and communications effort forms the basis for a science-policy report distributed to party delegations ahead of the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) to inform their positions and arguments on critical issues, including heat-adaptation planning, comprehensive mitigation strategies, and strengthened governance in energy-transition minerals value chains.
This year’s insights focus on the following:
(1) Methane: increasing levels, and likely sources of emissions
(2) Aerosols: short-term climate challenges of reduced air pollution
(3) Heat extremes: extensive impacts on habitability and livelihoods
(4) Maternal and reproductive health (MRH): overview of recent evidence
(5) Ocean changes: economic costs of an intensifying El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and potential weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)
(6) Amazon’s resilience: the role of ecological and biocultural diversity
(7) Critical infrastructure: vulnerability of interconnected systems
(8) Climate-resilient development in cities through a social-ecological-technical systems (SETS) approach
(9) Energy-transition minerals (ETMs): closing governance gaps for responsible value chains
(10) Acceptance of (and resistance to) climate policies
The policy implications derived from this year’s insights include elements for more comprehensive mitigation planning strategies that incorporate a more refined understanding of short-lived climate forcers and the interactions between individual pollutants (1 and 2), and the urgent need to prioritize heat-adaptation planning, particularly in vulnerable tropical areas, and with specific provisions to protect high-risk groups (3 and 4). The insights underscore the urgency for significantly more ambitious and effective emissions reductions to mitigate the effects on the climate but also on the stability of other Earth system processes in the ocean and the biosphere (5 and 6). The importance of holistic, system approaches to enhance resilience in the face of changing climate are highlighted across several insights, most explicitly for the development of cities and planning around critical infrastructure (7 and 8). Finally, two domains with implications for just transitions are featured, one hinging on governance and international trade (8) and the other on political economy consideration for more effective climate policies (10).
Other publication / Each year, Future Earth, the Earth League and the World Climate Research Programme gather leading scholars to review the climate research findings.
Journal article / The authors identify a set of 10 essential recent advances in climate change research with high policy relevance, across natural and social sciences.
Event on 01 July in Leeds / Join us in Leeds for a day of research and collaboration focused on the impact of indoor environments on child and adolescent health.
