The climate crisis is also an urgent and ongoing health crisis with diverse human impacts leading to physical, mental and cultural losses. Translating knowledge into action involves broad collaboration, which relies heavily on careful communication of a personal and politicized issue.

Last December saw the inaugural Health Day at a Climate Conference of the Parties (COP) and the announcement of the COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health, marking a substantial step in global recognition of the intersecting crises of climate change and health. Nature Climate Change speaks to Maria Neira, director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization, about successes and next steps.

Scientists and health professionals acknowledge that climate change is also a health emergency, but responses have been slow. Now, citizens and experts are turning to the courts as a path towards accountability, action and adaptation.

Climate change is a health emergency, impacting multiple facets of human well-being via direct and indirect pathways. Nature Climate Change asked experts from different health fields to share their thoughts on the urgent issues and possible paths forward.

Moving towards net-zero emissions requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, which bring environmental and socioeconomic risks. This study reveals that demand and technological interventions in hard-to-abate sectors help to achieve net-zero targets with less reliance on CDR.

Soil carbon storage is vulnerable to various climatic and anthropogenic global change stressors (for example drought, warming, land-use intensification). Here the authors show that multiple stress factors act simultaneously to reduce soil carbon storage and persistence across global biomes.

The authors quantify how climate change-related disturbances—drought, fires and insect outbreaks—impact the sensitivity of primary productivity to subsequent water stress. They show significant increases in sensitivity following drought and fire, leading to decreased terrestrial carbon uptake.

Internal variability can strongly influence global temperature trends. Here the authors show that if the internal variability in the eastern tropical Pacific is removed from recent trends, the constrained projected warming with future CO₂ emissions is higher than currently expected.

The authors use a mechanistic microclimate model to model the below-canopy conditions for 300,000 tropical forest locations across 30 years. They show that small temperature increases have already resulted in novel temperature regimes across most sites, and highlight areas that may act as refugia.

Polluted water contributes to water scarcity. Here the authors project water demands, availability and quality under climate and socio-economic changes and show that 56–66% of the global population will be exposed to clean water scarcity at the end of the century.

Carbon dioxide removal is an important part of climate mitigation pathways. However, its planning and implementation should be carefully reviewed given the potential limitations and risks.