ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 98 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
98 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 735 citations in OpenAlex.
- Climate change effects on ecosystem services: Disentangling drivers of mixed responses.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Pooled it
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- No Place to Hide? Regional Resilience and Vulnerability to Global Catastrophic Risk.Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) · 2026Review
- Diagrams-to-Dynamics (D2D): Exploring causal loop diagram leverage points under uncertainty.BMC medicine · 2026Article
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- Ambient heat and early childhood development: a cross-national analysis.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Effect of requiring advanced respiratory support on disaster-related anxiety among caregivers of children with medical complexity: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Plant health in the era of global changes, holobiont biology, and microbiome-based solutions.Horticulture research · 2026Article
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- Operating in recurrent crises: a qualitative study of decision-making and unintended consequences in a peripheral hospital.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Globally Critical Infrastructure: The Unique Risks and Challenges.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- Disentangling the historical impacts of warming and fishing on exploited freshwater fish populations.Science advances · 2025Article
- Carbon footprint of Pars plana vitrectomies in rhegmatogenous retinal detachment in Germany between 2013 and 2023 - A cohort study of fluorinated gas emissions.Graefe's archive for clinical and experimental ophthalmology = Albrecht von Graefes Archiv fur klinische und experimentelle Ophthalmologie · 2025Article
- A systemic risk assessment methodological framework for the global polycrisis.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Environmental Impact of Dermatology and Action Towards It: A Narrative Review.International journal of dermatology · 2025Review
- Warming and salinity changes of the upper ocean Caribbean through-flow since 1960.Scientific reports · 2025Article
38 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 9 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies' vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence-together with other global dangers-be usefully synthesized into an "integrated catastrophe assessment"? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.