Theme issue ‘The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’ compiled and edited by Dann Mitchell, Myles R Allen, Jim W Hall, Benito Mueller, Lavanya Rajamani and Corinne Le Quéré

About the issue

The much awaited and intensely negotiated Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015. It set out a more ambitious long term temperature goal than many had anticipated, implying more stringent emissions reductions that have been under-explored by the research community. By its very nature a multidisciplinary challenge, filling the knowledge gap requires climate scientists, the Earth system science community, as well as economists, engineers, lawyers, philosophers, politicians, emergency planners and others to step up. To kick start cross-disciplinary discussions, the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute focused its 25th anniversary conference upon meeting the challenges of the Paris Agreement for science and society. This issue consists of reviews, opinion pieces and original research from some of the presentations, covering a wide range of issues underpinning the Paris Agreement. They show that, on the balance of probability, limiting warming to 1.5°C, in the context of sustainable and equitable development, is still possible. It remains to be seen whether the evidence provided on the impacts of climate change avoided by stabilising at 1.5°C over higher temperature thresholds will be sufficient to motivate action on the scale and pace needed to achieve the 1.5°C goal.