In 2022, the war in Ukraine, political turmoil in the UK, and global economic uncertainty were just a few of the stories that dominated global headlines. And from the devastating floods in Pakistan to the heatwave across Europe, the impacts of climate change, happening now and those which experts anticipate, broke through to the front page.

The Carbon Brief compiled a list of the top 25 most-covered climate or energy-related papers using Altmetric data, an organization which scores academic papers according to the media attention they received. Among thousands of papers published in 2022, Future Earth is proud that experts from our community produced papers that were some of the most talked about last year.

“Tipping Points” Paper Takes #2 Spot

The groundbreaking paper, “Exceeding 1.5C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points,” was the second highest scoring for 2022. Earth Commission member David Armstrong McKay was lead author, and several other Earth Commission experts co-authored the paper published in September in the journal Science. It’s the first comprehensive assessment of climate-related tipping points since 2008. The research shows that multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Even at current levels of global heating, the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming. Access the full paper here.

The paper was mentioned in 667 news stories from 397 outlets – including the Guardian, New Scientist and BBC News. It received the highest number of mentions in blog posts and Wikipedia pages of the top 25 climate papers – at 55 and 34, respectively.

“Global Carbon Budget 2022” Ranks #11

The “Global carbon budget 2022”, produced by the Global Carbon Project, a Future Earth Global Research Network, just missed ranking among the top 10. The paper, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, details the annually estimated global carbon budget. For 2022, researchers found no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance that global warming of 1.5°C will be exceeded in nine years, according to the paper.

The Global Carbon Budget 2022 had 572 news and blog mentions from top outlets including The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters. The paper has been published yearly since 2006. Learn more.

You can find more of the Carbon Brief’s analysis of the climate papers most featured in the media in 2022 here.