Climate sciences and responses for the transformation towards climate neutrality (Horizon Europe)

This Destination contributes directly to the Strategic Plan’s Key Strategic Orientations ‘Green transition’, ‘Digital transition’ and ‘A more resilient, competitive, inclusive and democratic Europe’.

In line with the Strategic Plan, the overall expected impact of this Destination is to contribute to the “Advancing science for a transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society”.

Expected impacts:

Research should contribute to closing major knowledge gaps on the changing climate together with their associated impacts and risks, on both society and nature. It should also help develop tools to support decision-makers in designing and implementing effective mitigation and adaptation actions at various time and spatial scales while properly accounting for synergies and trade-offs with other policy objectives, such as just transition, territorial cohesion and leaving no one behind.

The main impacts to be generated by topics under this Destination are:

1. Supporting climate action (both mitigation and adaptation) in Europe and globally, through advancing climate science and the knowledge base underpinning actionable solutions, to accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral, climate-resilient and prosperous society.
2. Closing key knowledge gaps related to climate change, thereby contributing substantially to key European and international assessments such as IPCC, IPBES, EUCRA, and other initiatives such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under the World Climate Research Programme.
3. Strengthening the European Research Area on climate change by boosting scientific excellence and capacity in an inclusive manner across the participating countries.
4. Maximising synergies between mitigation and adaptation and with other policy priorities such as biodiversity and ecosystem preservation and restoration, disaster-preparedness, digitalisation, circular economy, prosperity and competitiveness, strategic autonomy, security and resilience, just transition, and the Sustainable Development Goals by exploring co-benefits, trade-offs and potential unintended consequences of climate strategies and policy interventions.

Topics with submission deadline on 04 March 2027:

• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-07: Advancing understanding, modelling and prediction of extreme events in a changing climate
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-08: Palaeoclimate science for a better understanding of Earth system dynamics
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-09: Assessing the performance of policy instruments to inform climate change mitigation action
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-10: Understanding and avoiding maladaptation to climate change
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-11: Africa-EU CO-FUND action on climate
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-12: Better understanding and attribution of land and ocean carbon sources and sinks
• HORIZON-CL5-2027-01-D1-13: Next generation scenarios for informing climate and sustainability transitions

Find the full work programme of Cluster 5 "Climate, Energy and Mobility " for 2026-2027 here.