New Climate Report: Overshooting 1.5°C Locks In Irreversible Ocean and Ice Damage

The 2026/2027 edition of the '10 New Insights in Climate Science' report, produced jointly by Future Earth, The Earth League and the World Climate Research Programme, has been published with contributions from more than 70 scientists across nearly 30 countries, including researchers from ESA's Climate Change Initiative. The report's headline finding is that overshooting 1.5°C of global warming — even temporarily — creates rapidly escalating risks of irreversible impacts for oceans, glaciers and permafrost. Heat absorbed by the oceans acts as a long-term warming reservoir, meaning future warming is partly locked in regardless of immediate emissions cuts, though deep reductions can still limit its magnitude. Other key findings include: climate change combined with growing freshwater demand is causing rapid freshwater loss across continents, threatening water security, food production and ecosystems; advances in climate-attribution science now allow specific actors' emissions to be linked directly to specific climate impacts, strengthening the evidence base for legal accountability and loss-and-damage claims; and transforming food systems toward more plant-rich diets could deliver major co-benefits for climate, biodiversity and human health. The report also highlights that the true economic damages of carbon emissions are substantially higher than previously estimated, and that geopolitical instability is producing an unequal global energy transition, accelerating clean energy in some countries while deepening fossil-fuel dependence in others.