ESM2025 review process is near the end. Thank you to all who shaped this project & helped make climate science more open & relevant for Europe.
The knowledge & networks created through ESM2025 will continue to support climate research, education & policy long after the project ends.
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ESM2025 leaves a strong scientific legacy: open data, open code, 131+ peer-reviewed papers, and advances to tools like OS-MAGICC, used to explore emissions pathways and carbon budgets.
Its insights feed into CMIP, community MIPs and future IPCC work.
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We also engaged directly with local stakeholders through World Café workshops, bringing together practitioners, NGOs, civil servants & scientists to discuss risks, uncertainties & climate information needs.
A key lesson: Engagement works best when co-designed with the stakeholders.
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ESM2025 co-organised three policy fora with the European Commission, bringing together the EU comission and researchers to discuss carbon budgets, overshoot risks, land-based mitigation and the role of Earth System Models in climate policy.
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ESM2025 also created new classroom-ready resources on climate modelling and curated material from EU climate projects — helping teachers bring up-to-date science into their lessons.
Another way an EU research project can strengthen climate literacy across Europe.
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A standout part of ESM2025 was its investment in climate education.
Through the Climate Education Summer Universities (CESUs), teachers from across Europe met researchers, explored climate processes and uncertainties, and exchanged approaches to climate teaching.
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ESM2025 explored climate behaviour after net-zero CO₂. Cumulative emissions remain a strong predictor of warming, but small deviations can shift when temperatures peak — a critical insight for assessing overshoot pathways.
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ESM2025 reinforced the basis for carbon budgets, confirming how closely global warming tracks cumulative CO₂ emissions. It also showed how non-CO₂ gases, especially CH₄, can shift the timing and scale of Paris-compatible pathways — a key nuance for 1.5°C and 2°C planning.
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ESM2025 also moved towards including land-to-ocean carbon fluxes directly in Earth System Models, by coupling inland-water processes into a land surface scheme and assessing how human activities since 1850 have altered riverine carbon exports.
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Carbon doesn’t flow straight from land to the open ocean.
In ESM2025, we have used the land-to-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC) framework to follow carbon through rivers, floodplains, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters – and to quantify what happens along the way.
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By improving how fires are represented in Earth System Models, ESM2025 helps reveal whether wildfire regimes amplify or dampen regional warming, and how smoke and particles affect pollution and atmospheric processes – key for assessing climate and environmental risks.
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Wildfires are increasing in many regions due to climate change, land use and vegetation dynamics.
ESM2025 improved how fire dynamics are simulated in Earth System Models, including their effects on carbon emissions, air quality and ecosystems.
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ESM2025 also advanced marine biogeochemical modelling.
Improvements to ocean carbon and nitrogen cycles, and to marine N₂O emissions, help capture how deoxygenation and nutrient dynamics feed back on climate.
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The ocean absorbs and redistributes vast amounts of heat and carbon.
In ESM2025, ocean models used for climate projections gained more realistic convection and eddies, improving how vertical motions and circulation are represented.
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Ice-sheet changes unfold over centuries, which means sea level continues to rise long after temperatures stabilise.
ESM2025 helped clarify these long-term feedbacks by improving how ESMs simulate ice–ocean–climate interactions and the processes behind committed sea-level change.
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Key processes such as surface mass balance, dynamic ice flow and ice–ocean melt are now represented.
This creates a stronger basis for exploring ice–climate feedbacks and long-term sea-level risks, including under overshoot scenarios.
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Nitrogen was another key part of ESM2025.
The project improved how terrestrial nitrogen cycles are coupled with land models, so we can better simulate how N availability affects plant growth, carbon uptake and N₂O emissions – including nitrogen released from thawing permafrost.
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ESM2025 strengthened how Earth System Models represent methane — from wetland emissions to the atmospheric chemistry that sets CH₄ lifetime. Models now respond more realistically to temperature, moisture and chemical changes.
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Land-based mitigation isn’t just about carbon.
ESM2025 helped underline how biogeophysical effects shape the climate impact of forests.
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🌱 Land-based mitigation (afforestation, reforestation, BECCS) features prominently in many climate pathways.
ESM2025 looked at how current Earth System Models respond to large-scale land-based CDR, and what that means for climate.
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Another of ESM2025 strengths was the way research connected with education and policy.
Not the only distinctive aspect of the project — but an important one for how results were shared and used.
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💬 One of ESM2025’s strengths was strengthening the dialogue between Earth System Models and Integrated Assessment Models — not from scratch, but in a more structured and practical way than before.
What changed in practice?👇🧵
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Today, ESM2025 officially comes to an end!
Since 2021, our European consortium has been building a new generation of Earth System Models to support mitigation & adaptation strategies aligned with the Paris Agreement. Watch these clips of our final video to see how far we've come!
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