Climate Data Analysis

A study published today changes the risk calculus for every long-horizon decision being made across the Atlantic world. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the ocean current that regulates climate across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, now has a greater than 50% probability of collapse, according to the new research which uses real-world ocean observations to validate climate models. ... and the impacts are: 🌊 50–100cm of additional sea-level rise along Atlantic coastlines. ❄️ Extreme cold winters and severe summer droughts across Western Europe . 🌧️ Collapse of the tropical rainfall belt across Sub-Saharan Africa and South America ⏱️ The tipping point — the moment collapse becomes irreversible — could arrive by mid-century. That is within current infrastructure cycles, bond maturities, and institutional investment horizons. The models producing these projections do not yet include Greenland meltwater, meaning the real risk is likely still higher. The WMO State of the Global Climate 2025 confirmed the trends feeding this: record ocean heat for the ninth consecutive year, accelerating ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica, and the highest Earth energy imbalance ever recorded. The physical system is moving faster than our risk frameworks. Any climate risk assessment that treats AMOC collapse as low-probability is now out of date and should be revised. Any coastal infrastructure investment not pricing in accelerated sea-level rise is built on obsolete assumptions. Any food and agricultural security strategy for Europe, Africa, or South America that ignores potential circulation collapse is incomplete. What is your organisation's AMOC scenario? Source: Portmann et al., Science Advances, April 15 2026 https://lnkd.in/e4HRQM6X

The impact of climate change on the SDGs 🌎 The latest State of the Global Climate 2024 report from WMO provides a clear assessment of how accelerating climate change is affecting global stability. With 2024 recorded as the hottest year on record—1.55°C above pre-industrial levels—the implications extend far beyond temperature increases. The findings highlight the direct and systemic risks climate change poses to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rising temperatures, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, and glacial melt are driving widespread environmental and socio-economic disruptions. These changes are not occurring in isolation; they are interconnected, amplifying existing challenges related to food security (SDG 2), water availability (SDG 6), economic resilience (SDG 8), and biodiversity loss (SDGs 14 & 15). Ocean changes are among the most critical risks. Increasing ocean temperatures and acidification are disrupting marine ecosystems, reducing fish stocks, and weakening the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink. This has significant consequences for coastal communities, food security, and global supply chains. Glacial loss and sea-level rise are reshaping landscapes, affecting infrastructure, water resources, and human settlements. Coastal erosion, land degradation, and increased flooding threaten urban development (SDG 11), economic productivity (SDG 9), and disaster resilience (SDG 13). These impacts also contribute to population displacement, further straining social and economic systems. The increase in extreme weather events, from heatwaves to hurricanes, is exacerbating global inequality. Agricultural losses, infrastructure damage, and rising adaptation costs are disproportionately affecting developing regions, slowing progress toward economic stability, sustainable production, and resource security (SDGs 8 & 12). The WMO report emphasizes that while exceeding 1.5°C in a single year does not mean the Paris Agreement target has been breached, the trend underscores the urgency of reducing emissions and strengthening adaptation strategies. Without immediate action, climate risks will continue to escalate, undermining progress toward the SDGs and increasing long-term economic and environmental costs. Addressing these challenges requires systemic policy shifts, investment in climate resilience, and cross-sector collaboration. As climate change intensifies, integrating sustainability into decision-making at all levels will be essential to mitigating risks and safeguarding global development objectives. Source: State of the Global Climate 2024 #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #climatechange #sdgs

🔥 Climate risks are no longer abstract—they’re disrupting businesses, communities, and economies right now. The World Economic Forum’s 2024 report, "The Cost of Inaction: A CEO Guide to Navigating Climate Risk", delivers a sobering message: ignoring climate risks isn’t just irresponsible—it’s economically devastating. 🌡️ Key insights from the report: 💥 Climate-related disasters have caused $3.6 trillion in damages since 2000, exposing critical vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure. 📉 Physical risks could put 5-25% of EBITDA at risk for some sectors by 2050 under a 3°C warming trajectory. 💸 Transition risks, like carbon pricing and changing regulations, could impact 50% of EBITDA in energy-intensive industries by 2030. 🌱 Every $1 invested in climate adaptation yields $2-$19 in avoided costs, while green markets are projected to grow from $5 trillion in 2024 to $14 trillion by 2030. 💡 My reflections: 🔄 Resilience isn’t enough anymore. Too often, we focus on simply "weathering the storm" of climate risk. But true leadership is about rebuilding something better—rethinking markets, redesigning business models, and creating solutions that lead entire industries forward. 🌍 Supply chain fragility is the Achilles’ heel of the global economy. A single extreme weather event can cascade across operations, grinding everything to a halt. Climate-resilient supply chains can’t just be about survival—they must be radically adaptive, decentralized, and built to thrive under disruption. 📊 Climate risk is fundamentally redefining the concept of value. Businesses stuck chasing quarterly earnings are missing the bigger picture. In a world of rising costs and irreversible climate impacts, long-term value will belong to those who embed sustainability, resilience, and equity into their strategies. The time for cautious, incremental steps has passed. How are we using this moment to transform the way we work, innovate, and lead? #ClimateAction #Sustainability #Resilience #Leadership #Innovation

What happens when companies break their climate promises? Almost nothing. A new study has uncovered troubling truths about corporate climate commitments. Out of 1,041 companies with emissions reduction targets set for 2020: -9% (88 firms) openly failed to meet their goals. -31% (320 firms) stopped reporting on their targets without explanation. What happens when companies miss these targets? Practically no consequences: -Only three failed companies faced media scrutiny. -No significant market backlash, media sentiment shifts, or ESG rating downgrades. In contrast, companies were rewarded with positive press and improved ESG ratings simply for announcing these targets. The bigger issue: This accountability gap threatens the credibility of ambitious 2030 and 2050 climate pledges. Unlike financial targets, which are rigorously monitored, emissions goals often exist in a vacuum—without oversight or real consequences for failure. Interestingly, the study found that: -Firms in common-law countries and those with stronger media accountability had better success rates. -High-emitting sectors like energy and materials struggled the most, with the highest rates of "disappeared" targets. With more companies backing away from climate action, we cannot afford to let this cycle continue. It’s time for corporate sustainability leadership to move beyond announcements and deliver measurable, transparent results. Accountability mechanisms—demanded by both regulators and stakeholders are urgently needed. A great piece of work by Xiaoyan Jiang, Shawn Kim, and Shirley Simiao Lu! Let’s learn from these insights to ensure that corporate climate pledges actually deliver. #climatechange #netzero #esg

Doubling Down on Data: The Energy Crisis Behind Your Screen As we march towards 2026, a startling forecast emerges: the energy consumption of data storage is set to double. In an era where digital consumption is as common as breathing, the implications of our data usage stretch far beyond our screens, potentially exacerbating the climate crisis. Environmental journalist Brian Calvert delves into this pressing issue, offering insights into the digital age's unseen costs and what we can do to mitigate our technological footprint. 💡 Energy Surge: The demand for electricity to power data centers, cryptocurrency, and AI technologies could dramatically increase, equaling the consumption of a nation like Japan. 🌍 Digital Age Dilemma: Our modern conveniences—internet browsing, online music, digital toll collections—carry hidden environmental costs, from manufacturing to energy consumption. 🤖 AI's Appetite: Generative AI, responsible for innovations like ChatGPT, requires massive energy inputs, equivalent to the annual electricity use of hundreds of homes for just one training session. 🔍 Sustainable Tech: The conversation with Hugging Face's lead climate researcher highlights the urgency for greener AI and more sustainable technology practices. 🌱 Personal Impact: Each digital action we take has a footprint. Embracing "digital sobriety" and making conscious choices about our technology use can lead to significant energy savings. This exploration not only illuminates the growing energy demands of our digital habits but also empowers us with the knowledge to contribute to the solution. #DataEnergyCrisis #DigitalFootprint #GreenAI #SustainableTech #EnergyConsumption #ClimateAction #DigitalSobriety #TechImpact #EnvironmentalAwareness #FutureOfData

Excited to share our new review article, which synthesizes evidence across disciplines to understand the #psychological and #contextual determinants of household clean #energy adoption. 🏠 Our review focuses on high-impact technologies with major climate change mitigation potential: • Electric vehicles • Residential solar PV systems • Heat pumps • Battery storage systems Despite technical progress and policy support, adoption rates remain lower than expected in most climate scenarios. Our review discusses why and what can be done to accelerate uptake. 🔎 Some takeaways from the review: 1️⃣ Psychological and contextual factors jointly shape adoption decisions. Decisions to adopt EVs, PV systems, heat pumps, and battery storage are influenced by cognitive biases (e.g., loss aversion, temporal discounting), motivational factors (e.g., values, worldviews, identity), and social influences (e.g., norms, peer behavior, symbolic meaning). These operate alongside and interact with structural conditions, such as income, infrastructure, and policy. 2️⃣ Consumer behavior deviates systematically from techno-economic assumptions. Standard energy models often assume rational utility maximization. However, real-world adoption is more complex and influenced by a wealth of factors, including bounded rationality, information misperceptions, and emotional responses—all of which can distort cost–benefit assessments and delay adoption, even when technologies are financially advantageous. 3️⃣ Contextual heterogeneity is critical but often under-addressed. Socio-demographic characteristics, geographic setting, institutional design, and cultural values significantly impact the likelihood of adoption and the effectiveness of interventions. Yet, much of the empirical evidence remains concentrated in high-income contexts. Broader cross-cultural and field-based studies are urgently needed. 4️⃣ Effective interventions must be both targeted and integrated. Standalone approaches—whether economic (e.g., subsidies) or behavioral (e.g., social norm messaging)—often fall short because they address only a subset of the barriers to adoption. We need intervention portfolios that are strategically matched to specific psychological and contextual determinants. Read-only (free) link: https://rdcu.be/epJUS Published version (paywalled): https://lnkd.in/dKSJZABs (I'm happy to share the published version - just message me.) Huge thanks to Anne Günther and Lukas Engel for leading this collaborative effort and to co-authors Matthew Hornsey, Joyashree Roy, Linda Steg, Kim-Pong Tam, Anne van Valkengoed, Kim Wolske, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, and Ulf Hahnel! Copenhagen Business School University of Basel Environmental Psychology Groningen Centre for Sustainability International Energy Agency (IEA) #climatechange #behaviorchange

The world isn’t ready for what’s coming next in sustainability data. We’re quietly living through the creation of a financial infrastructure for sustainability—and it’s happening faster than most realize. Over 2,000 sustainability regulations have emerged globally in the past decade, with a 155% surge in ESG-related rules since 2018. This isn’t just about compliance—it’s a fundamental shift in how we define value, risk, and performance. What’s driving it? • EU: CSRD & ESRS will impact over 50,000 companies, embedding double materiality. • India: BRSR Core is mandatory for top 1,000 listed firms. • China: CSDS expands carbon reporting in high-impact sectors. • California: SB 253/261 reshape U.S. climate disclosures. • Australia: AASB S2 aligns with IFRS S2, effective in 2025. • Brazil: CVM 193 adopts IFRS-aligned sustainability standards. • And more: Japan, Canada, Singapore, Nigeria, Turkey—all aligning with global standads. We’ve entered a phase where climate, nature, and transition risks are becoming embedded in financial decision-making—from underwriting and M&A to risk pricing and insurance modeling. In the real estate sector, GRESB has made third-party verified performance data (GHG, energy, water, waste) a best practice. ESG metrics are now more embedded in due diligence for loans, equity, and new acquisitions. Yes, today’s data is often backward-looking. And yes, we still need science-based thresholds and stronger assurance. But this foundational work is what allows us to get there. Without reliable, standardized, machine-readable data, we can’t scale action, track progress, or hold anyone accountable. Just as GAAP and IFRS created trust in financial markets, IFRS S1/S2, CSRD, and the GHG Protocol are setting the stage for credible, comparable sustainability data. It will not be a “parallel system.” in the future. We are building the groundwork for full integration into the global financial system. This shift will transform: • How we price risk • How capital is allocated • How resilient companies are rewarded • How we define long-term value creation It’s messy. It’s political. It’s imperfect. But it’s also historic. If you’re in this space, you’re not just reporting data—you’re helping build a new operating system for business and capital markets. One that rewards transparency, resilience, and climate alignment. Let’s keep building—with more rigor, more ambition, and more impact.

❓❓❓WHICH CLIMATE POLICIES WORK   💡New insights on this crucial question in our new paper 'Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades', published last week in Science.   This is probably the most important study that I have contributed to. Screening more than 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from 6 continents, we identify those policy combinations that were successful in achieving substantial emission reductions (see picture below). This offers crucial guidance for countries to design climate policies and fight climate change.   Key messages: ✅Mixes>standalone: Climate policies tend to work best if they're part of a policy mix rather than implemented alone. ✅There is no one-size fits all approach: Successful policy mixes vary across sectors and between developed and developing countries.   This study was possible thanks to our #OECD Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework (CAPMF). This is exactly the kind of empirical research, for which we have developed the CAPMF. I'm very hopeful that this study will pave the way for further research that supports countries to develop best practices.   Links Study: https://lnkd.in/emNSyUmw Climate policy explorer: https://lnkd.in/e4YyxwKa CAPMF dataset: https://oe.cd/dx/capmf   Many thanks to my co-authors Annika Stechemesser, Nicolas Koch, Ebba Mark, Elina Dilger, Patrick N. Klösel, Laura Menicacci, Felix Pretis, Nolan Ritter, Moritz Schwarz, Helena Vossen & Anna Wenzel from PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) gGmbH and others.   #climateaction #climatepolicy #policy

More than 40 climate scientists have issued an open call to the Science Based Targets initiative and Article 6 Supervisory Body to ensure Nature--our most powerful and scalable carbon storage and removal system globally-- isn’t left on the sidelines in the climate fight. Their message is clear, we cannot deliver on climate stabilization without large scale nature interventions. My favorite points below: 💡 Managing the Earth’s climate over the coming decades is as important as managing it over the coming centuries. ✅ Framing “permanence” as a binary threshold—either 1,000 years or failure—does not serve climate science or policy. A more accurate framing focuses on durability, a concept based on reversal risk: how long a tonne of CO2 is likely to remain out of the atmosphere, and what mechanisms exist to manage reversal risk and compensate for lost carbon. 🔎 Unlocking the ~11 Gt yr -1 of mitigation potential available through NCS in the next decade (IPCC, 2023; Griscom et al. 2017), will require policy measures that evaluate and address reversal risks associated with all carbon storage and removal pathways, rather than policies that default to an exclusion of a wide swath of options. 👍 NCS are not a substitute for fossil fuel phaseout or engineered removals. But geological storage cannot deliver the immediate, large-scale climate benefits that nature can. Climate mitigation must be portfolio-based: incorporating options across the durability-scale spectrum, matched to specific goals, timelines, and risk tolerances. ⚠️ Insisting that only 1,000-year removals count toward climate neutrality—a proposition that has appeared with increasing frequency in policy and guidance documents—ignores the fact that climate risk is cumulative and time-sensitive. Temporary reductions can have lasting impact if they help flatten the emissions curve, delay peak warming, and keep us within planetary boundaries. Conversely, failing to act—by excluding credible, well-managed, near-term options—carries irreversible consequences. ‼️ Successful approaches to climate mitigation that combine NCS, energy, and industrial alternatives will not be an “either, or” strategy but a “yes, and” strategy (Anderson et al. 2019). I am really excited about the conversation we're having on permanence and durability system design and management. We can deliver approaches to durability and reversal risk in the carbon markets that can ensure the atmosphere stays whole, projects can get done in the real world, and we have strong regulatory and legal frameworks in place that enable large scale finance to flow and for nature to play its necessary role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. See the full letter here: https://lnkd.in/gRx4H8vi

What’s holding back natural climate solutions? Natural climate solutions (NCS)—from reforestation and agroforestry to wetland restoration—have long been championed as low-cost, high-benefit pathways for reducing greenhouse gases. In theory, they could provide over a third of the climate mitigation needed by 2030 to stay under 2°C of warming. But in practice, progress is stalling. A sweeping new PNAS Nexus study reveals why. Drawing on 352 peer-reviewed papers across 135 countries, researchers led by Hilary Brumberg cataloged 2,480 documented barriers to implementing NCS. The obstacles are not ecological. Rather, they are human: insufficient funding, patchy information, ineffective policies, and public skepticism. The result is a vast “implementation gap” between what is technically possible and what is politically, economically, or socially feasible. The analysis found that “lack of funding” was the most commonly cited constraint globally—identified in nearly half of all countries surveyed. Yet it rarely stood alone. Most regions face a tangle of interconnected hurdles. Constraints from different categories often co-occur, compounding difficulties: poor governance erodes trust; disinterest stems from unclear benefits; technical know-how is stymied by bureaucratic confusion. These patterns vary by region and type of intervention. Reforestation projects, for instance, face particularly high scrutiny over equity concerns—especially in the Global South, where land tenure insecurity and historical injustices run deep. Agroforestry and wetland restoration often struggle with the complexity of design and monitoring. Meanwhile, grassland and peatland pathways remain understudied, despite their importance. The study’s most striking insight may be spatial. Countries within the same UN subregion tend to share a similar profile of constraints—more so than across broader development regions. This geographic clustering suggests an opportunity: Supranational collaboration, if properly resourced and attuned to local context, could address shared challenges more efficiently than isolated national efforts. Crucially, the authors argue that piecemeal fixes will not suffice. Because most countries face an average of seven distinct constraints, many from different domains, effective solutions must be integrated and cross-sectoral. Adaptive management—a flexible, feedback-based approach—could help. By identifying which barriers arise at each stage of an NCS project’s lifecycle, it may be possible to design interventions that are not just technically sound, but socially and politically viable. Natural climate solutions still hold vast potential. But unlocking it will require less focus on where trees grow best—and more on where people can make them thrive. 🔬 Brumberg et al 2025. Global analysis of constraints to natural climate solution implementation. PNAS Nexus. https://lnkd.in/gDmYJEph