New climate models are zooming in on regional risks

This article is published in association with United Nations.

From his office on the outskirts of the French city of Toulouse, Roland Séférian literally charts out the future of our planet. Working at the National Centre for Meteorological Research (CNRM), the climate scientist designs models that project future climate change.

Among the best known are the models featured in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body that assesses the science of climate change. These models simulate the entire Earth system by dividing it into a grid of large boxes, known as grid cells. This can make it difficult to capture the smaller-scale processes that shape climate risks in particular places.

Researchers across Europe are developing new Earth-system models to address two related challenges: representing more fully how human activities change the climate, and simulating climate processes more realistically at global and local scales. 

Tracking human influence

The latest models Séférian has been working on tackle the first of these challenges. They explore how the climate responds to human activities, primarily emissions and land use change. 

“We can now also see what might follow from introducing a technology that takes CO₂ out of the air,” he explained.

To do this, researchers are improving the links between the atmosphere, land and oceans in climate models. This makes it easier to trace how human emissions move through the Earth system, including the carbon absorbed and released by land and oceans, and how these changes influence the climate.

With a background in oceanography, Séférian specialises in how the oceans and other parts of the Earth system absorb, store and release carbon. From 2021 until November 2025, he coordinated ESM2025, an EU-funded research collaborative project that developed Earth-system models to study the climate’s response to human activities.

Researchers at institutions including the Max Planck Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Reading worked together to improve how models represent these connections. Their work covered processes such as land carbon storage, ocean circulation, marine ecosystems and the movement of carbon from land to the sea.

“

We can now also see what might follow from introducing a technology that takes CO₂ out of the air.Roland Séférian, ESM2025

One finding highlighted by the project showed that rivers transfer around 20% more carbon to the oceans than estimated in the IPCC’s 2021 assessment – an example of why improving these links matters for understanding the global carbon cycle.

Existing climate models have to simplify some of these complex links to make simulations manageable. By refining them, the ESM2025 team could explore more consistently how changes in emissions and land use affect both the climate and the wider environment. 

Alongside these refinements, new tools, including AI, are helping to improve climate models. In ESM2025, researchers used machine learning alongside observations and established theory to better capture how climate, carbon and other natural cycles interact.

Climate in greater detail

Climate models have long provided valuable information about global and regional change. As their resolution increases, they need fewer statistical shortcuts, and the finer resolution allows researchers to examine how climate change plays out in regions and local areas around the world.

“The traditional models were designed to tell you the global average temperature, and how it might change,” said Bjorn Stevens, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. 

Global averages are valuable for understanding climate change. For individuals and communities, however, information about particular places is essential.

“Imagine if the daily weather forecast gave you only the global average temperature for tomorrow. For most of us that information would mean very little,” Stevens said. He coordinated another EU-funded research collaboration, NextGEMS.

While ESM2025 examined how the Earth system responds to human pressures, Stevens and his colleagues developed a new generation of models that use high-performance computing to represent local processes around the world in greater physical detail than coarsely resolved models can.

Frida Bender, a professor in the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University in Sweden, is one of the NextGEMS researchers. She explained that traditional models use grid squares that are on average 150 kilometres on each side. “NextGEMS now allows us to simulate the climate at scales of a few kilometres, globally,” she said.

“

NextGEMS now allows us to simulate the climate at scales of a few kilometres, globally.Frida Bender, NextGEMS

Bender and colleagues from across Europe used NextGEMS simulations to build a more physically grounded picture of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, including how those systems interact with the carbon, water and nutrient cycles at local scales around the world.

“That’s completely new,” said Stevens. “And it means that in large parts of the world, suddenly regions and places that never used to be part of the climate change narrative are now included.”

From models to decisions

The new models with local detail worldwide let researchers reassess the risks that global warming poses to society and ecosystems, while giving decision-makers clearer information about how those risks vary from place to place.

Policymakers can use this information to explore how policies tailored to local conditions might reduce risks such as catastrophic rainfall, shifting ocean currents, heat extremes, drought and wildfires.

At regular workshops, NextGEMS researchers worked alongside energy providers, engineers and fisheries managers to explore how local-scale information could support planning – from ocean currents and temperature changes affecting ecosystems to wind patterns and cloudiness affecting future solar and wind energy.

“Models that resolve local scales as part of a global system can help stakeholders understand how wind patterns might change with warming,” said Bender. “That’s crucial information if you want to put down wind turbines.”

Together, the two research teams have helped build a clearer picture of how the climate is expected to change – and of the role human activities play in shaping that future. Their simulations can give communities, industries and policymakers a stronger basis for understanding and preparing for climate risks in the decades ahead.

Research in this article was funded by the EU’s Horizon Programme. The views of the interviewees don’t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.

This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine