Strategic Climate Risks Initiative

YouTube video by PBS Terra This Is How the World Ends According to Science

How can we avoid the end of the world? Well, it all starts with planning...

That's what our Director, Laurie Laybourne, discussed with Maiya May on PBS.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wugk...

‘You can’t eat electricity’: how rural solar farms became the latest battlefront in Britain’s culture war Reform UK is exploiting opposition to solar panels – but most farmers are more worried about climate change.

92%: the percentage of funding for Nigel Farage's far-right political party Reform UK that comes from fossil fuel interests.

Across the world, anyone blaming immigrants, etc, it's all just a smokescreen to allow the rich to keep on getting richer by killing our planet.
share.google/W2gwfc0XVpUy...

Derailment warning as world faces threats to its ability to act on climate change We may have seriously underestimated the risks of climate change. This includes derailment risks. This does not mean we are doomed, and it certainly does not mean there is no point in trying to turn o...

Saying a single year exceeding 1.5°C warming doesn't mean the Paris Agreement has failed provides as much reassurance as the captain of the Titanic telling passengers that there is an important difference between 'sinking' and 'sunk'.

www.technosphere.earth/derailment-w...

Weathering The Climate Storm How climate impacts could derail climate action — and how to stop them

Climate change isn’t just creating new challenges - it’s derailing our ability to solve them.

In our latest article for The New Climate, we explore how derailment risks are rising, and what actions can keep us on course.

Read the piece here 👇

medium.com/the-new-clim...

Jamaica invested heavily in climate disaster insurance. It looks about to pay off | CBC News Jamaica’s decade-long effort to build layers of financial protection in case of natural disasters might help the country access millions of dollars in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa — an...

Following Hurricane Melissa's devastation, Jamaica’s decade-long effort to build financial resilience will be tested. Its $150 million catastrophe bond, triggered by a storm’s low pressure and path, will provide quick relief. Jamaica’s model may serve as a guide for other climate-vulnerable nations.

NEW: Devastating imagery from Jamaica, before & after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa.

Black River — near total destruction.

A year ago, deadly floods hit Spain - supercharged by climate change. Yet climate-denying politicians gained ground.

Our new research reveals how derailment risks threaten climate action, and outlines strategies for building resilience and reinforcing progress.

👉 www.scri.org.uk/derailment

Overshoot: a new podcast about a world beyond 1.5°C – trailer

The world missed its goal for tackling climate change. What happens next?

Ten years after agreeing to limit global heating to 1.5°C, the world is overshooting.

How do we navigate what comes next?

Welcome to Overshoot.

Listen to the trailer now 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/2ICK...

The world missed its climate target. What happens next?

In 2015, governments agreed to limit global heating to 1.5°C. In 2025, we’re blowing past this.

How did we get here - and how do we navigate what’s next?

Find out in Overshoot, a new 4-part documentary.

Trailer coming soon.

YouTube video by Thinking the Unthinkable Positive Tipping Points: Overcoming Climate Instability

“The future isn’t something that happens to us, it’s something we build together. By choosing to act wisely today, we can navigate uncertainty and emerge stronger tomorrow.” - @laurielaybourn.bsky.social, @climate-risk.bsky.social

youtu.be/IkjsAQeomtQ

UK solar power output is breaking records this year, and has now exceeded the total generated in 2024 🌞

www.ft.com/content/9e49...

The rate of sea level rise all along the US Atlantic coast has been accelerating in recent years.

tamino.wordpress.com/2025/08/03/s...

This is likely connected to the slowing of the AMOC...

journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

Prolonged wind droughts in a warming climate threaten global wind power security - Nature Climate Change Prolonged low wind speeds can lead to a strong reduction in wind power generation. Here, the authors show that such wind drought events become more frequent and extended under global warming, threaten...

🌀 Could climate change undermine renewable energy itself?

A new study highlights a worrying feedback: as the planet warms, wind power potential could significantly decline across key global regions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‘Profound concern’ as scientists say extreme heat ‘now the norm’ in UK Frequency of heatwaves and flooding raises fears over health, infrastructure and how society functions

This framing is misleading.

It's super important that we recognise that there's no 'new normal' until we stop burning fossil fuels - it just keeps getting worse & worse!

As the scientists quoted in the article say "today’s high temperatures are likely to be average by 2050, & cool by 2100"

The World Is Warming Up. And It’s Happening Faster.

"There is growing evidence that the most extreme extremes probably will increase faster and to a greater extent than we used to think was the case"- @weatherwest.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/c...

Only two years left of world’s carbon budget to meet 1.5C target, scientists warn Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

We’re wasting the remaining carbon budget on war and AI.

UK must consider food and climate part of national security, say top ex-military figures Former army and navy leaders urge government to think beyond military capability in advance of key defence review

💣🌍 “National security” isn’t just about tanks and treaties anymore. It needs to consider climate change.

Climate risk is a national security risk.

Our strategies—and our spending—need to reflect that.

Now.

📖 Full story via The Guardian:
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

US pushes financial regulators to backtrack on climate risk project Effort to weaken Basel committee task force comes as Trump administration steps back from environmental issues

The Trump administration’s move to defund and downgrade the Basel Committee’s climate risk initiative is setting off alarm bells.

Stepping away now doesn’t just disrupt progress—it risks locking in the very gaps that need closing. We need to double down, not retreat.

www.ft.com/content/c6dc...

"Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) declined over the 25 years of precise satellite data, with
the decline so large that this change must be mainly reduced reflection of sunlight by clouds"

- James Hansen & Pushker Kharecha

#Climate

www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailin...

Figure of the day: Over the last YEAR, Copernicus' extrapolated date for breaching 1.5C of warming (based on the 30-year trend) has moved FORWARD (aka "sooner") by 19 months. Think about that.

This is incredible

Progress in adapting to climate change: 2025 report to Parliament - Climate Change Committee Footnotes have been removed from the HTML version of this report. For the footnoted version of this report,…

Is the UK ready for systemic climate risks?
Short answer: No.

From the Climate Change Committee (CCC):
👉 "The country is not prepared for [existing] climate impacts."
👉 "Adaptation is not yet a top priority across government."

📢 Full report here: www.theccc.org.uk/publication/...

Are we in a ‘delayed disclosure trap’? The risk that better institutional climate risk assessments will not be done

Institutions vastly underestimate their exposure to climate change, and reassessment is needed to understand the full scope of risk.

But even if they did a realistic assessment, would they ever tell anyone?

We explore this 'delayed disclosure trap' in our latest:

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Paris residents vote in favour of making 500 more streets pedestrian Parisians voted in a referendum on Sunday to pedestrianise a further 500 of the city's streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by the French capital's left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.

This is both a transition policy and a security policy. The less fuel you import, the more stable your economy and population will be.

The end of the 'peace dividend'? | NEB Digest This week’s New Economy Brief explores the various proposals being discussed in Germany and the EU for funding increased defence spending, and compares them to the policy options on offer in the UK.

"just as in Germany [defence, climate change, and health] cannot really be separated in the UK, with recent IPPR research showing [...] climate change presents a major security risk."

Our work on climate security covered by: @neweconomybrief.bsky.social

www.neweconomybrief.net/the-digest/t...

We’ve failed to stop climate change — this is what we need to do next While we can still limit warming by cutting emissions, we now face having to adapt to more extreme weather

We’ve failed to stop climate change. So what do we need to do next?

"[Now] the penny is dropping that we didn’t prevent a global-scale climate crisis. We’re now in a global-scale climate crisis."

Read our director's thoughts in @thetimes.com:
www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...

Europe Enters Its Metal Era | Kate Mackenzie & Tim Sahay What kind of Europe survives a fractured transatlantic military alliance?

"[In] order to be free from authoritarian blackmail—whether Putin’s or Trump’s—Europe must go green."

www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/eur...

Line graph time series of 2025's daily Arctic sea ice extent compared to decadal averages from the 1980s to the 2010s. The decadal averages are shown with different colored lines with purple for the 1980s, blue for the 1990s, green for the 2000s, and white for the 2010s. Thin white lines are also shown for each year from 2000 to 2024. 2025 is shown with a thick gold line. There is a long-term decreasing trend in ice extent for every day of the year shown on this graph between January and April by looking at the decadal average line positions.

This is still happening. It's your Wednesday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is still the *lowest* on record for the date (JAXA)

about 670,000 km² below the 2010s mean
about 2,250,000 km² below the 1980s mean

A winter for the record books in the Arctic. More info zacklabe.com/graduate-res... ⚒️

With the world's focus on crumbling geopolitics, (in)security, extremism and evil wars, it is understandable that climate change has fallen down the agenda.

But to be clear: we cannot adapt our way out of all the impacts so we still need to everything possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.