A group of leading climate scientists is calling for an internationally mandated assessment of avoidable climate change risks, warning that the world lacks an authoritative and up-to-date global analysis of what is truly at stake.
Writing in the journal Nature, the authors argue that while scientific reports have outlined likely climate impacts, no coordinated global effort has comprehensively identified the most severe risks societies should prioritize avoiding.
The commentary is led by Professor Rowan Sutton of the University of Reading and the Met Office Hadley Centre, alongside Professor Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the Met Office and the University of Exeter.
“Despite clear scientific evidence and repeated warnings, the world remains unprepared for the scale and complexity of these challenges,” Sutton said, stressing that humanity still has an opportunity to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes of climate change.
The scientists note that assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been instrumental in identifying probable impacts of global warming. However, they argue that these reports do not constitute a dedicated global risk assessment focused specifically on the most undesirable and potentially destabilizing outcomes.
Without such an assessment, governments, businesses and communities may struggle to grasp the full scale of interconnected climate risks or to prioritize resources effectively.
Climate threats rarely occur in isolation, the authors emphasize. Extreme heat can directly harm human health while simultaneously driving drought and crop failures, potentially triggering food shortages and civil unrest. Prolonged drought can degrade land, increasing vulnerability to flooding and landslides when heavy rainfall eventually arrives. These cascading risks may amplify each other in ways that are not immediately obvious.
The experts warn that policymakers may underestimate the severity of potential impacts. While sea-level rise is often framed in terms of the need for stronger flood defenses, the long-term reality could involve the abandonment of low-lying urban areas such as parts of London or New York. Similarly, while rising temperatures are expected to increase heat-related deaths, authorities may be unprepared for scenarios involving mass casualties during extreme heat events that exceed human tolerance limits.
A comprehensive global risk assessment, the authors argue, would clarify the likelihood and magnitude of such worst-case scenarios. Importantly, they stress that the goal is not to promote fatalism but to highlight the outcomes that can still be avoided through decisive action.
Developing such an assessment would not be straightforward. The complexity of climate science, regional differences in impact, limited data-sharing, and political and economic barriers have so far hindered the creation of a regularly updated, internationally accepted framework.
Nonetheless, the researchers describe bridging this gap as an urgent priority. An internationally mandated, transparent assessment of avoidable climate risks, they say, would sharpen public understanding, guide mitigation and adaptation strategies, and help direct support to the most vulnerable regions and populations.
“The world stands at a crossroads in the fight against climate change,” Stott said. “Making clear both the scale of the risks and the opportunity we have to avoid the worst-case scenarios is essential to safeguarding our shared future.”
The authors conclude that time remains to prevent the gravest impacts of global warming but only if governments act with a clearer understanding of the risks ahead.