Bringing together 40 leading institutions, the CMCC-led Horizon Europe project FUTURA will help shape the next generation of climate scenarios and projections and its data infrastructure used by scientists, policymakers, and international assessments worldwide

A new European effort to strengthen the scientific and data infrastructure foundations of future climate scenarios and projections officially launches today. Coordinated by CMCC, FUTURA – Future of climate change scenarios of the Earth system, impacts and socio-economic outcomes for assessment and society – is a four-year Horizon Europe project designed to advance how climate futures are developed, assessed, and delivered to support decision-making.

The project brings together 40 leading European institutions working in research and climate services covering Earth system modelling, climate impacts, integrated assessment modelling, as well as the related data curation and access infrastructure. Its goal is far-reaching: for the first time, all major European modelling and infrastructure communities will work together within a single coordinated framework to develop future emissions pathways, climate projections, impact scenarios, and socio-economic pathways across scales and levels of complexity.

Climate scenarios are key to help researchers explore how the climate may evolve under different social, economic, and policy pathways. They are widely used in international assessments, including those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), support national and international climate policy development, and help governments, businesses, and communities understand possible future risks and opportunities in a changing climate.

As countries work to reduce emissions and adapt to a changing climate, the quality and consistency, as well as agile, timely delivery of these scenarios become increasingly important. Improving how they are developed and connected across scientific communities is therefore an imperative for climate research.

The FUTURA climate pathways system strengthens the treatment of policy-relevant topics. This integrated and sustained system allows for comprehensive testing and understanding of the plausibility of future scenarios to inform how we can adapt, mitigate and develop sustainably.

“FUTURA represents a unique opportunity to bring together all the scientific communities that are essential for developing integrated and sustained modelling efforts to understand climate change, impacts and the socio-economic outcomes,” says Anna Pirani, Director of the CMCC Program on Predicting Socio-Economic Outcomes in a Changing Climate (PSEO) and Principal Investigator of the project. “Through the FUTURA climate pathways system, we aim to strengthen the scientific basis for climate assessments and provide more robust information for decision-making on how we can pursue plausible and sustainable futures.”

The project will contribute to the next generation of international climate modelling activities, building on and serving international initiatives including CMIP, IAMC, CORDEX, ISIMIP, and by climate emulator communities. FUTURA will also deliver the European contribution to the next generation of the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), one of the world’s most important infrastructures for climate data sharing and access.

Over the next four years, researchers will address some of the most pressing scientific questions related to future climate change. These include evaluating advances in climate model performance, understanding climate feedbacks and long-term committed warming, assessing net-zero and carbon dioxide removal pathways, improving projections of extreme events, and quantifying climate impacts across sectors and regions.

Particular attention will be given to overshoot scenarios – futures in which global temperatures exceed a level of global warming of 1.5^oC before peaking and then declining – and to understanding the reversibility of impacts on critical systems such as oceans, ice sheets, and ecosystems, as well as for society.

The project will also explore how different mitigation choices, socio-economic developments, and climate impacts interact, helping to identify pathways that are both scientifically plausible and relevant for policy.

“By coordinating expertise across disciplines and institutions, FUTURA aims to create a more integrated, responsive, and sustainable European climate scenario ecosystem, strengthening Europe’s contribution to global climate science in support of the international science-policy interface,” says Pirani. “For CMCC, coordinating FUTURA is a privilege. It represents a major leadership role within the European climate research landscape and reinforces the Foundation’s long-standing commitment to advancing climate knowledge that can inform action.”

The FUTURA project is funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe (Grant Agreement No. 101295156).

About CMCC:

CMCC – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change – is a non-profit, international and multidisciplinary research center that produces advanced knowledge on the effects of climate change and how we can make natural systems, economies, and societies more resilient. Bringing together cutting-edge climate modelling, impact assessment, and economics, CMCC delivers climate insight for global impacts.

More information about the project:

Project page: FUTURA: Future of Climate Change Scenarios of the Earth System, Impacts and Socio-Economic Outcomes for Assessment and Society