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

The Destination 1 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”.

Advancing climate science and the knowledge base necessary to underpin actionable solutions is essential for catalysing the global transition to a climate-neutral and climate-resilient society. Evidence on research gaps of high policy relevance can be found in the European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) 49 , and in the report “The Next frontier for Climate Change Science”50 .

Research should contribute to closing major knowledge gaps on the changing climate together with their associated impacts and risks, on both society and nature, and to developing 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 tradeoffs with other policy objectives, such as biodiversity, industrial competitiveness, just transition and leaving no one behind. Notably, state-of-art scientific evidence will be increasingly vital to guide policy decisions aimed at safeguarding long-term societal welfare and EU’s economic resilience as climate change impacts increase. Tailored scientific approaches that take into account disparities between regions, countries, communities and diverse groups within society, are needed, to understand how they are affected by global warming and what array of response options is available to them.

The first objective is to support and accelerate climate action (both mitigation and adaptation) globally by:

• Improved knowledge of the Earth system, its recent evolution and future responses under different global emissions pathways and socio-economic scenarios;
• Increased understanding of the interrelated impacts between climate change, human and natural systems, including from compound, cascading and tail risks, improving the attribution to anthropogenic factors, and leveraging the role of climate services for effective adaptation and response strategies;
• Well-designed and evaluated solutions and pathways for climate-resilient, low greenhouse- gas-emission development enabling just societal transformation while promoting citizen and stakeholder involvement, climate literacy and integration of natural and social sciences;
• Increased synergies with the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, by generating actionable knowledge in support of transformative adaptation.

The second objective contributes substantially to key international assessments by closing key knowledge gaps related to climate change. Such assessments include the ones by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion and initiatives such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

The third objective is a strengthened European Research Area on climate change by boosting scientific excellence and capacity in an inclusive manner across the participating countries.

The fourth objective is the maximisation of synergies with other policy priorities such as biodiversity and ecosystem preservation and restoration, just transition, just resilience, pollution reduction, health and well-being, resource conservation, circularity, and the Sustainable Development Goals by exploring co-benefits, trade-offs and potential unintended consequences of climate strategies and policy interventions.

Strong links exist with activities funded under Cluster 6 on climate-ocean-polar-cryosphere nexus, and in Cluster 3 on disaster risk reduction, and with the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. The results of research funded under this Destination, in particular those informing the design of effective mitigation and adaptation pathways, are also highly relevant for other EU Missions on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, on Soil, and on Ocean and Water.

Call Topics with the submission deadline 24 Sep 2025

• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-01: Climate simulations data and knowledge for optimal support of IPCC Assessments and International Policy
• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-02: Advancing Earth System Models to increase understanding of Earth system change
• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-03: Modelling of mitigation pathways for Fgases
• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-04: The attribution to climate change, and improved forecasting of extreme and slow-onset climate- and weather-related events and their impacts
• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-06: Fostering equity and justice in climate policies – Societal Readiness Pilot
• HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-07: Implementing the climate action pillar of the EU-African Union Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy

Full text from the work programme "Climate, Energy and Mobility" (2025) can be found here.