To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. The authors propose to make an Earth Virtualization Engine (EVE) as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change.

Fundamentally, EVE is about improving the quality and accessibility of Earth system data and doing so in ways that are just and equitable.

EVE envisions a world where everyone knows how climate and climate change affect them and where this knowledge empowers them to act. By generating entirely new and inherently better sources of information, EVE strives to catalyse a change in the broader ecosystem of data and services to deliver a just, equitable, and scientifically grounded basis for action.

EVE will be made up of international centers of excellence, each accessing outstanding computational and datahandling capabilities and each embedded within the rich and expanding landscape of climate-related data, experiences, and information. This will enable EVE to fill a data space with climate projections of much greater fidelity with local granularity, globally. It will link these projections, through a digital commons, to data describing the physical, biological, chemical, and social dimensions of the Earth system.

EVE’s digital commons will efficiently expose data to new (e.g., generative artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality) methods of analysis and proactive information production. This will enable stakeholders to construct and interact with their own climate scenarios. EVE’s technical ambition will strengthen the capabilities of all sorts of communities to command new technologies – built on scientific excellence, transparency, and openness across disciplines – to rise to the specific challenges climate change poses for them.

EVE will add modeling capacity beyond the reach of most countries, let alone existing modeling centers. This capacity is urgently needed to improve model fidelity, to assess impacts, and to integrate observations, globally.

Heavy precipitation hitting vulnerable communities in the UAE and Oman becoming an increasing threat as the climate warms

Researchers have assessed the extent human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the weather conditions that caused the flooding in the United Arab Emirates and the northern parts of Oman in April 14–15 2024. The region was hit by exceptionally heavy rainfall causing massive disruption in infrastructure and public life in the area and leading to at least 20 fatalities in Oman and four in the UAE.

The 1.5°C limit and risks of overshoot

This briefing looks at what the 1.5°C limit means in terms of adaptation and loss and damage for the most vulnerable countries and regions. It finds that slowing down warming is critical to buy us time to adapt and also to avoid irreversible loss and damage. Even if warming rises above 1.5°C (overshoot) we can bring it down again with ambitious emissions reductions.

Le seuil de +1,5°C et le risque de dépassement de ce seuil

Ce rapport examine ce que la limite de 1,5 °C signifie en termes d'adaptation et de pertes et dommages pour les pays et régions les plus vulnérables. Il constate qu'il est essentiel de ralentir le réchauffement pour nous donner le temps de nous adapter et pour éviter des pertes et des dommages irréversibles. Même si le réchauffement dépasse 1,5 °C, nous pouvons le faire baisser à nouveau en réduisant les émissions de manière ambitieuse.

Effects of idealised land cover and land management changes on the atmospheric water cycle

This study investigates how land cover and land management affects atmospheric moisture transport using global climate models. It finds that cropland expansion is generally causing a drying and reduced local moisture recycling, while afforestation and irrigation expansion generally cause wetting and increased local moisture recycling.

Effectiveness of water-related adaptation decreases with increasing warming

When it comes to water, adaptation to climate change becomes less effective when warming is above 1.5°C, according to a new study looking at water-related climate risk at 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C, and 4°C of warming. The study finds adaptation needs to go hand-in-hand with ambitious emissions reductions and decarbonisation.

About us

Decarbonisation targets and 1.5℃ pathways

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Earth Virtualisation Engines (EVE)

Publications

Heavy precipitation hitting vulnerable communities in the UAE and Oman becoming an increasing threat as the climate warms

The impacts of multiple tropical cyclone events and associated precipitation on household income and expenditures

Mapping the climate risk to urban forests at city scale

The 1.5°C limit and risks of overshoot

Hydrologic interpretation of machine learning models for 10-daily streamflow simulation in climate sensitive upper Indus catchments

Le seuil de +1,5°C et le risque de dépassement de ce seuil

Representing natural climate variability in an event attribution context: Indo-Pakistani heatwave of 2022

Extreme terrestrial heat in 2023

Climate impacts in northern forests

Effects of idealised land cover and land management changes on the atmospheric water cycle

Effectiveness of water-related adaptation decreases with increasing warming

A better integration of health and economic impact assessments of climate change