The world is set to approach a climate threshold that the scientists and policymakers have spent years trying to avoid. Global warming is on course to exceed 1.5°C – the temperature limit at the heart of the Paris Agreement. Reportedly, climate change has doubled heatwaves between 2024 and 2025, bringing severe droughts, floods and water shortages. These changes damage crops, homes, infrastructure, ecosystems, and place high pressure on public health and livelihoods.
The new UNEP report Limiting Overshoot warns that the world is entering an era in which temporarily exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next few years is increasingly difficult to avoid under current policies and near-term emissions trajectories. Even under hopeful scenario, global temperatures are projected to peak at around 1.8°C, while other pathways could push the world beyond the dangerous 2°C threshold. But crossing that line does not mean the fight is over. It means the stakes have changed. The report delivers a crucial message: 1.5°C climate overshoot must not be an excuse for surrender.
The choices made today will determine how high temperatures climb, how long they remain elevated and whether humanity can eventually bring warming back down. That distinction matters. A world that briefly exceeds 1.5°C before temperatures decline is vastly different from one that races towards much higher warming and remains there for decades. Every fraction of a degree matters. Every year of additional warming matters. And the consequences are no longer abstract.
Beyond 1.5°C Climate Overshoot: The Warning We Can No Longer Look Away From
Climate overshoot occurs when average global temperatures remain above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target for several years or even decades before eventually falling back below it. This is fundamentally different from a single unusually hot year. How far temperatures rise above 1.5°C climate overshoot – and how long they remain there – will depend largely on how quickly the world cuts greenhouse-gas emissions and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The evidence across Europe consistently indicates that higher peak warming and longer durations of exceedance are associated with greater risks for people and nature. The summer has offered a grim preview of what a hotter world can look like. Wildfires have ripped through forests and grasslands. Rivers and reservoirs have shrunk under prolonged drought. Extreme heat has disrupted everyday life, threatened health and damaged homes and infrastructure.
The images have become familiar: walls of flames approaching communities, landscapes turned brown under relentless heat, dried riverbeds and exhausted reservoirs. These are not simply dramatic photographs. They are visual evidence of a changing climate.
For many people, climate change can feel distant when it is presented through statistics, scientific projections and graphs. But a wildfire burning near a familiar town, a river disappearing from a landscape or families being forced from their homes can make the crisis immediate.
Climate change becomes something people can see. And what people see can shape what they feel – and ultimately what they do.
The danger of climate images: How Climate change is becoming impossible to ignore
Images have a unique power. They can communicate information faster than words and trigger emotional responses that statistics sometimes cannot. A photograph of a raging wildfire can instantly convey danger. A picture of a polar bear stranded on shrinking sea ice can make the consequences of warming feel painfully real. Images of drought-stricken farmland can transform an otherwise distant climate statistic into a story about food, livelihoods and survival. But there is a paradox.
The more frightening images become, the greater the possibility that people may feel powerless rather than motivated. When climate disasters appear enormous, relentless and beyond individual control, people can experience fear, anxiety and helplessness. They may conclude that the problem is simply too large to influence. And when people believe nothing they do will matter, disengagement can follow. That is one of the biggest challenges for climate communication today.
Fear can paralyse – but it can also motivate
Research examining hundreds of images used by environmental campaign groups, including Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion, suggests that photographs depicting threat and vulnerability can produce some of the strongest negative emotions. Yet those same images were also regarded as particularly useful forms of climate communication. That finding carries an important lesson.
The answer is not to hide the frightening reality of climate change. It is to connect that reality with a pathway towards action.
A photograph of a wildfire should not leave viewers thinking only about destruction. It can also raise questions about how communities can prepare for extreme heat and fire, how landscapes can be restored, how emissions can be reduced and how governments can strengthen climate resilience.
A picture of a drought-stricken river shouldn’t simply communicate loss. It can open a conversation about water conservation, sustainable agriculture, ecosystem protection and better management of increasingly scarce resources. The image becomes more powerful when it shows both what is at risk and what can still be done.
The 1.5°C Climate Overshoot line is not a cliff
This is where UNEP’s message about climate overshoot becomes particularly important. Exceeding 1.5°C should not be interpreted as a single moment when the world suddenly crosses a cliff and all climate goals become meaningless. Overshoot is a pathway. It involves exceeding 1.5°C, reaching a peak and potentially bringing global temperatures back down. The objective, therefore, is to make that overshoot as small and as short as possible.
The higher the peak temperature, the greater the risks to people, economies and ecosystems. And the longer temperatures remain elevated, the greater the chance of triggering irreversible changes and exceeding the limits of adaptation. This makes today’s decisions extraordinarily important.
There is still a difference between a world with brief 1.5°C climate overshoot and one that locks itself into much higher levels of warming. That difference will be determined by the speed and scale of emissions reductions, alongside adaptation and climate-resilient development.
Mitigation and adaptation must move together
The climate debate is sometimes divided between preventing future warming and adapting to the warming that is already happening. The reality is that humanity needs both. Mitigation means rapidly reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to limit future warming. Adaptation means preparing societies for the climate impacts that can no longer be avoided – from heatwaves and floods to drought, wildfire, food insecurity and water shortages.
Neither can replace the other. Without mitigation, adaptation becomes increasingly difficult and expensive as warming rises. Without adaptation, communities remain exposed to climate impacts even if emissions fall rapidly. The UNEP report therefore points towards an “overshoot, peak and decline” pathway in which mitigation efforts limit peak warming while adaptation helps societies navigate the changing conditions along the way.
The images we see today are warnings about tomorrow
The growing number of climate disaster images appearing in the media presents a difficult challenge – but also an opportunity. People are more likely to engage with stories that involve places they recognize and people whose experiences feel familiar.
A distant climate projection can seem theoretical. A flooded street in a nearby city is not. A graph showing rising temperatures can be easily forgotten. A photograph of a family watching a wildfire approach their home can stay with us. This is why visual storytelling matters.
As extreme weather increasingly reaches places previously considered relatively protected, climate communication is moving from distant landscapes to people’s own neighborhoods. The climate crisis is becoming local. And that can make it much harder to ignore.
From Climate Anxiety to Climate Action: 1.5°C Climate Overshoot and the Period Involving
The challenge now is to ensure that fear does not become fatalism. The purpose of showing climate destruction should not be to convince people that the future is hopeless. It should be to demonstrate why action is urgent. The world may be approaching – and in some assessments already temporarily entering – a period beyond 1.5°C. But the height of the 1.5°C climate overshoot and the duration of that period are not predetermined.
There remains a vast difference between limiting warming and allowing it to accelerate. Every fraction of a degree avoided means fewer risks. Every year emissions cuts matters. Every ecosystem protected, community prepared and vulnerable population supported can strengthen humanity’s ability to withstand what lies ahead.
The photographs of burning forests, empty rivers and devastated communities should therefore not be viewed merely as images of a worsening crisis. They should be seen as warnings – and calls to action. The world may be moving beyond 1.5°C, but that mustn’t mean abandoning the goal. The future beyond that threshold is still being written. We can still limit, adapt to and return from higher temperatures. And what happens next depends heavily on what the world chooses to do now.
