Paris, France | April 7–10, 2025 — Over the course of four impactful days, leading climate scientists, Earth system modellers, impact researchers, and science communicators came together at Sorbonne University’s Henri Poincaré Institute for the TipESM & ClimTip Joint Annual Meeting 2025. The event marked a milestone for the two Horizon Europe projects to deepen our collective understanding of tipping points and strengthen collaboration across scientific disciplines and projects.

A Week of Insights, Collaboration, and Clustering

From April 7–8, the TipESM & ClimTip Joint Conference brought together the two Horizon Europe projects for a dynamic exchange of knowledge, findings, and methodologies. Organised around five key themes, Cryosphere, Biosphere, AMOC & SPG, Tipping Point Prediction Methodologies, and Impacts and Communication, the conference showcased the latest research and provided a platform for discussion across project members.

The event not only served as a forum to present scientific progress but also as a stage for clustering Horizon Europe initiatives, encouraging synergies and knowledge sharing between projects working on interrelated topics. Cross-disciplinary dialogue across the projects spurred across the five key themes of the conference, culminating in conversation on translating science towards impact and communication for policymakers, the media, and the broader public.

To conclude the conference, the participants spent an evening on the top floor of Sorbonne University’s Zamansky Tower, overlooking a 360 degree view of Paris while networking and continuing discussions from the past two days of the conference.

Internal Reflections and What’s in the Pipeline – TipESM Annual Meeting

The TipESM Annual Meeting, held from April 9–10, shifted the focus inward, as the project consortium highlighted progress made across its six scientific themes and what was in the pipeline. From enhancing Earth system model (ESM) experiments to refining early warning indicators and developing a comprehensive tipping point risk register, discussions provided both inputs on the work carried out but valuable insights for the work ahead.

Breakout groups addressed critical topics such as detection methods for tipping points across social-ecological systems and experiments to run – forced, ensemble and domain. The meeting rounded off with plenary discussions on shaping two key results to come out of TipESM – the Early Warning Indicators Register and the Risk Register.

Storylines as a Bridge Between Science and Society

Following the TipESM Annual Project Meeting, the team joined forces again with ClimTip on the afternoon of April 10 to distill outcomes from the conference themes and discuss joint topics spanning across the two projects. A key highlight was the dedicated storylines session, which explored how scientific findings can be woven into compelling, policy-relevant narratives. These storylines aim to connect science with decision-making, providing powerful tools to communicate the processes the models are showing the scientists, complex climate risks associated and possible strategies to tackle these challenges. In this engaging session, project members gathered together in breakout groups to start experimenting and building these storylines – something that was underlined as a key agenda point for future discussions and meetings.

We would like to thank our local hosts at Sorbonne Univeristy, Institut Henri Poincare, our co-organisers at ClimTip, and all the contributors including presenters, chairs and rapporteurs for making this event a success!

A full report on this clustering event will be published, so stay tuned!