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Non-Technical Summary: This review highlights 10 recent advances in climate change research with high policy relevance, spanning diverse topics: (1) the global temperature jump of 2023–2024; (2) sea surface warming and marine heatwaves; (3) land carbon sinks; (4) interactions between climate change and biodiversity loss; (5) accelerated groundwater decline; (6) global dengue incidence; (7) income and labour productivity loss; (8) strategic considerations for scaling carbon dioxide removal (CDR); (9) integrity of carbon credit markets; and (10) policy mixes for climate change mitigation.

Technical Summary: Interdisciplinary understanding is vital for delivering sound climate policy advice. However, navigating the ever-growing and increasingly diverse scholarly literature on climate change is challenging for any individual researcher. This annual synthesis highlights and explains recent advances across a variety of fields of climate change research. This year, the 10 insights focus on: (1) the record-warmth of 2023/2024 and the elevated Earth energy imbalance; (2) acceleration of ocean warming and intensifying marine heatwaves; (3) northern land carbon sinks under strain; (4) reinforcing feedback between biodiversity loss and climate change; (5) accelerated depletion of groundwater; (6) global dengue incidence; (7) global income losses and labour productivity declines; (8) strategic scaling of CDR; (9) integrity challenges in carbon credit markets and emerging responses; and (10) effective policy mixes for emissions reductions. The insights have been written to be accessible to researchers from different fields, serving as entry-points to specific topics, as well as providing an overview of the evolving landscape of climate change research. In the final section, the insights are used to develop overarching policy-relevant messages. This paper provides the basis for a science-policy report that was shared with all Party delegations ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil.