Glossary of Climate Terms

• ACE (Action for Climate Empowerment): a term adopted by the UNFCCC to empower all members of society to engage in climate action through six elements: climate change education and public awareness, training, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues.
• Adaptation: Adjusting systems, communities, or infrastructure to reduce harm from and build resilience against climate impacts that are already happening or will happen in the future. Examples of actions include assessing and planning for climate risks, building early warning systems, protecting ecosystems, and addressing climate-induced displacement.
• Adaptation finance: Funding for actions that reduce vulnerability to climate impacts
• Adaptation Fund: A financing mechanism established under the Kyoto Protocol that funds concrete adaptation projects in developing countries most vulnerable to climate change, such as flood defenses or drought-resistant agriculture.
• Adaptive capacity: The ability of a person, community, or institution to respond effectively to climate risks.
• Albedo: The fraction of sunlight a surface reflects back into space, expressed as a percentage. High albedo, such as on cool roofs painted white, means more reflection and therefore more cooling.
• Anthropogenic: Caused by humans, especially in reference to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
• Anticipatory Action: Taking steps before a forecasted climate hazard occurs to reduce its potential harms.
• Article 6: Belonging to the Paris Agreement, it comprises three main components: Article 6.2 on bilateral carbon trading, Article 6.4 on a UN-backed carbon market which is now called the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), and Article 6.8 on non-market approaches.

• Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR): Launched at COP29 (2024), the BAR is the UN climate body's primary implementation tool for the Global Goal on Adaptation. It reinforces adaptation targets by linking the UAE Framework's targets, the adaptation indicators being developed, and countries' National Adaptation Plans into a single streamlined pathway.
• Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM): represent the inaugural set of interventions established by the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) with US $250 million set aside for the 2025 -2026 pilot phase. All developing countries particularly vulnerable to climate change are eligible to access the Fund.
• Belém Adaptation Indicators: A set of 59 global metrics adopted under the UNFCCC at COP30 in Belém, Brazil that provide a common framework to measure worldwide progress toward the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience. They span all adaptation sectors from water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and integrate cross-cutting issues such as finance, technology, and capacity-building.
• Belém-Addis Vision on Adaptation: Established at COP30 (2025), this is a two-year policy alignment process running through COP32 in Addis Ababa, in which countries develop guidance for operationalizing the 59 Belém Adaptation Indicators adopted at COP30. Countries are working to translate the indicators into practical tools for tracking and accelerating adaptation progress at the national level.
• Belém Gender Action Plan: Adopted by Parties at COP30, the Belém Gender Action Plan (GAP) for 2026–2034 is designed to drive sustained, long-term gender-responsive climate policy and action, implementing the vision of the enhanced Lima work programme on gender. There is mention of health but not sexual and reproductive health and rights.
• Belém Health Action Plan: Launched at COP30 by the WHO and the Government of Brazil to which some governments and organizations have signed on to implement health sector adaptation actions to ensure equity and social participation. It is backed by the Climate and Health Funders Coalition which announced an initial $300m of support.
• Black carbon: Soot particles from incomplete combustion that warm the climate and can harm health.
• Blended finance: Combining public, philanthropic, and private capital to mobilize more climate investment.
• Blue carbon: Carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrasses.
• Bridgetown Initiative/Bridgetown 3.0: The call by Barbados President Mia Mottley to reform the world’s development finance systems such as lending policies to help low-income countries finance climate adaptation and rebuild after disasters.

• Cap-and-trade: A market-based system that sets a limit ("cap") on total emissions and allows companies to buy and sell ("trade") a limited number of emissions allowances within that cap.
• Carbon budget: The total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted globally while keeping warming below a given target, such as 1.5°C.
• Carbon credits: Generated by activities that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions such as protecting forests, restoring wetlands, or converting to renewable energy, to be traded in the carbon market.
• Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): A way to compare different greenhouse gases using their warming effect relative to CO2.
• Carbon footprint: The total greenhouse gas emissions associated with an activity, organization, person, or product.
• Carbon markets: There are two main types: compliance and voluntary. Compliance markets are created through laws or regulations set by governments at the national, regional or international level. Voluntary carbon markets are national and international marketplaces where companies, individuals or governments can buy and sell carbon credits to meet voluntary goals.
• Carbon pricing: A general term for policies that put a cost on greenhouse gas emissions, intended to encourage lower-carbon choices. It includes mechanisms like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems.
• Carbon removal or carbon dioxide removal (CDR): Process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and locking it away to slow, limit, or even reverse climate change. Carbon removal technologies are sometimes called Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs).
• Carbon sequestration: Capturing and storing carbon so it does not remain in the atmosphere.
• Carbon sink: A system that absorbs more carbon than it releases, such as forests, soils, or oceans.Sink refers to any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol, or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
• Carbon tax: A fee charged per ton of greenhouse gases emitted, designed to give businesses and individuals a financial incentive to reduce emissions.
• Carbon trading: A market-based system in which carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are traded with the goal of limiting emissions. It involves the buying and selling of carbon credits that permit entities to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases.
• CDM (Clean Development Mechanism): is a UN-run carbon offset program under the Kyoto Protocol that allows industrialized countries to fund emission-reduction projects in developing nations. For every ton of CO2 reduced, projects earn Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits used to meet international climate targets.This has now evolved into the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement.
• CERF: United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) channels rapid financing toward climate-related shocks, anticipatory action, and community resilience building.
• Climate Bonds: Debt investments issued specifically to raise money for projects with environmental or climate benefits, such as renewable energy or clean transportation.
• Climate Change: a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, which is (in addition to natural climate variability) observed over comparable time periods.
• Climate Resilience: The capacity to prepare for, predict and respond to nature disasters, hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to the climate.
• Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems Initiative (CREWS): A multilateral fund that helps the world's least developed countries and small island states build early warning systems for floods, storms, and other climate hazards, so communities have more time to prepare and protect lives.
• Climate Justice: An equity lens recognizing that those least responsible for climate change often face the greatest harms.
• Climate System: The totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions.
• Climate Variability: Natural fluctuations in climate, such as those driven by El Niño or seasonal cycles, that occur separately from the long-term warming trend caused by human activity.
• CMA: All States that are Parties to the Paris Agreement are represented at the COP serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA), while States that are not Parties participate as observers. The CMA oversees the implementation of the Paris Agreement and takes decisions to promote its effective implementation.
• CMP: All States that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are represented at the COP serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), while States that are not Parties participate as observers. The CMP oversees the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and takes decisions to promote its effective implementation.
• Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR): A founding principle of the UNFCCC recognizing that all countries share responsibility for addressing climate change, but that wealthier, more industrialized nations bear greater responsibility given their historical emissions and greater capacity to act.
• Concessional finance: Capital offered on more favorable terms than the market
• COP (Conference of the Parties): The supreme decision-making body of the Convention. All States that are Parties to the UN Climate Convention are represented at the COP, the annual meeting of countries, at which they review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and make decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention, including institutional and administrative arrangements.

• Debt swap: An arrangement that converts debt into funding for climate or conservation priorities.
• Decarbonization: Reducing or eliminating carbon emissions from energy, transport, health, industry, and other sectors.

• Ecosystem services: Benefits people receive from nature, such as water filtration, pollination, and flood protection.
• Emissions: Greenhouse gases and/or their precursors released into the atmosphere over a specified area and period of time.
• Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender: The Lima Work Programme on Gender was established in 2014 as an open-ended and long-term call to action to mainstream gender into all UNFCCC processes and implementation, and ensure women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in the UNFCCC process. At COP25 (2019), the Parties agreed to a 5-year Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, and at COP29 (2024), the Parties concluded review of this work program and decided to extend it for ten more years.
• Emissions trading: A market mechanism for buying and selling emissions allowances.
• Extreme weather event: A weather occurrence that is rare for a particular place and time, such as an intense heatwave, severe storm, or record rainfall. Climate change is making many extreme weather events more frequent or severe.

• False Solutions: Coined by climate justice activists, this refers to quick technological fixes that perpetuate inequalities and attempt to cash in on the climate crisis. Market-based solutions such as carbon trading have led to corporate greenwashing, directing resources away from addressing the root causes of climate change.
• Feedback loop: A process in which climate change amplifies itself, such as ice loss reducing reflectivity and increasing warming.
• Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD): An operating entity under the financial mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that addresses the growing needs of vulnerable communities in low-income countries facing the irreversible impacts of climate change.

• Geoengineering: Also known as climate engineering, describes a range of ways to intervene on a large scale in the Earth’s natural systems to directly combat climate change. They mostly fall into two categories: those designed to remove CO2 from the air and those that try to limit the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface.
• GHG (greenhouse gas): Gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural (such as carbon dioxide and methane) and anthropogenic (such as fluorinated gases), that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation and traps heat in the atmosphere.
• Global Environment Facility (GEF): A multilateral environmental fund advancing global goals for nature, climate, and pollution and supporting country efforts to tackle environmental conservation.
• Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA): The world's overarching collective commitment on adaptation, originally proposed by the African Group of Negotiators in 2013. It aims to "enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change," contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal (limiting warming to well below 2°C, pursuing 1.5°C) of the Paris Agreement.
• Global Methane Hub: A global network of scientists, experts, activists, policymakers, and philanthropists working toward the single goal of mitigating methane.
• Global Stocktake: The Global Stocktake is a five-year review process under the Paris Agreement to measure global progress on climate change. It evaluates three main areas: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building climate resilience, and securing financial support.
• Global warming: The long-term rise in Earth's average surface temperature, mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions. It is part of the broader picture of climate change, which also includes shifts in rainfall, storms, and other weather patterns.
• Grant-equivalent: The subsidy value of a loan or financial package, often used to compare finance types.
• Greenhouse Effect: The natural process by which certain gases in the atmosphere trap heat from the sun, warming the Earth's surface. Human activities like burning fossil fuels have intensified this effect, driving the warming we now call climate change.
• Green Climate Fund (GCF): A major multilateral climate fund for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.
• Greenwashing: Misleading claims that exaggerate the environmental benefit of a company’s products, operations, or policies.

• Hazard: A climate-related event or trend that can cause harm, such as flooding or drought.
• Health National Adaptation Plan (HNAP): Developed by Ministries of Health to outline steps to make health facilities and public health systems more resilient to climate change in order to protect lives. The plans are increasingly becoming vehicles to secure global climate financing, and link the health sector’s needs and decarbonization actions to broader national climate goals.
• Heat stress: Harmful physiological strain caused by high temperatures, especially when humidity is high.
• Heatwave: A prolonged period of excessively hot weather, which can cause serious health risks including heat stroke and exacerbate existing health conditions, especially among elderly people, outdoor workers, and other vulnerable groups
• Human Mobility: Refers to three forms of population movement: i) displacement – understood as the primarily forced movement of persons, ii) migration – primarily voluntary movement of persons, and iii) planned relocation – planned process of settling persons or groups of persons to a new location.

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):the UN body that assesses climate science.In 2007, the IPCC received the Nobel Peace Prize for communicating the dangers of climate change and how to counteract them.
• IPCC Reports: Issued by the IPCC every 6-7years to synthesize the latest research on various aspects of climate change, aggregating and summarizing information from thousands of scientific journals, and then reviewed by thousands of scientists and experts from around the world. The latest report is referred to as AR6 (Assessment Report 6), published in four parts with the last publication in 2023 that fed into COP28 in Dubai. AR7 will be finalized by 2029.

• Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP): A financing arrangement in which wealthier countries provide funding and technical support to help a coal-dependent developing country shift to clean energy, while addressing the social and economic impacts on affected workers and communities.
• Just transition: Moving to a low-carbon economy in a way that protects workers and communities.

Kyoto Protocol: A 1997 international climate treaty linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with binding emissions targets for certain countries.

• Land use change: Changes in how land is used, such as deforestation or agricultural expansion, which affect emissions and resilience.
• LDCF (Least Developed Countries Fund): A climate fund, managed by the Global Environment Facility, supporting the special needs of LDCs.
• Loss and damage: Unavoidable and irreversible impacts of the climate crisis that cannot be avoided through mitigation or adaptation.
• Loss and damage, non-economic: Also Non-Economic Losses (NEL), refers to a broad range of losses that are not easily quantifiable financially, that can result from the adverse impacts of climate change. These may affect individuals (e.g. loss of life, health, or mobility), society (e.g. loss of territory, cultural heritage, indigenous or local knowledge, or societal or cultural identity) or the environment (e.g. loss of biodiversity or ecosystem services).

• Maladaptation: “Actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions, increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable outcomes, or diminished welfare, now or in the future. Most often, maladaptation is an unintended consequence.” (IPCC AR6 2022)
• Methane: A powerful greenhouse gas emitted from fossil fuels, agriculture, and waste.
• Mitigation: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions or increasing removals to limit future warming.
• Mitigation finance: Funding used to lower emissions or increase carbon sequestration
• Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer: A global treaty adopted in 1987 to regulate the production and use of chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), that deplete Earth’s ozone layer and expose it to harmful UV radiation.

• National Adaptation Plan (NAP): A country-level plan to identify and manage climate risks, established under the UNFCCC Cancun Adaptation Framework.
• National climate fund: A country-managed financing vehicle for climate priorities.
• Nature-based solutions: Actions such as forest protection or restoration that store carbon and support adaptation.
• The New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG): set after COP21 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, The NCQG sets a financial target for the support needed by developing economies for climate actions post 2025.
• NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution): A country’s national climate action plan under the Paris Agreement detailing how they will reduce emissions, adapt to climate change impacts, and build climate resilience.
• Net zero: A state where remaining greenhouse gas emissions are balanced by removals.

• Ocean acidification: The chemical change in ocean water caused by absorbing carbon dioxide, which harms marine ecosystems.
• Offset: A carbon credit intended to compensate for emissions elsewhere, though quality and integrity vary.

• Paris Agreement: A legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 195 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016. It is the main global climate agreement centered on country pledges and periodic strengthening
• Permafrost: Ground that stays frozen for at least two consecutive years, found mainly in Arctic regions. As it thaws due to warming, it can release stored carbon and methane, further accelerating climate change.
• Planetary boundaries: Scientific thresholds that describe limits beyond which Earth systems may become unstable.
• The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is the leading authority on climate science, advancing the frontier of integrated research for global sustainability towards a safe and just climate future.
• Pre-industrial baseline: The average global temperature before large-scale industrialization (roughly 1850–1900), used as the reference point for measuring how much the planet has warmed.

Quasi-extreme event: An event near the edge of historical climate norms, often used in climate risk analysis.

• Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+): A UNFCCC framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, while supporting conservation and sustainable management.
• Renewable energy: Energy from sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower that do not rely on fossil fuels.
• Reservoir:  Component(s) of the climate system where a greenhouse gas or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored.
• Resilience: The capacity to recover and persist after climate shocks.
• Results-based finance: Payments made after verified outcomes are achieved.
• Risk pooling: Spreading climate risk across a larger group, often used in insurance mechanisms.
• Risk transfer: Moving financial risk away from vulnerable actors through insurance or similar tools.

• Santiago Network for Loss and Damage: A UNFCCC mechanism created to help developing countries get technical assistance to avert, minimize, and address climate-related loss and damage.
• Sea level rise: The increase in ocean water levels caused by melting ice sheets and glaciers, along with the expansion of seawater as it warms, threatening coastal communities, infrastructure, and freshwater supplies.
• Solar Geoengineering: Solar radiation management (SRM), involving all methods used to reflect some of the incoming sunlight back into space to cool the Earth.
• Sovereign climate finance: Public finance channeled through national governments.
• Subsidiary Bodies (SB): Subcommittees that are established by the UN Convention on Climate change for specific purposes.
• Subsidiary Bodies for Implementation (SBI): At the heart of all implementation issues under the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, and more recently the Paris Agreement, its agenda is shaped around the key building blocks of implementation of all these treaties and instruments: transparency, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity-building, and aims at enhancing the ambition of Parties on all aspects of its agenda.
• Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA): One of two permanent subsidiary bodies to the Convention established by the COP/CMP. It supports the work of the COP, the CMP and the CMA through the provision of timely information and advice on scientific and technological matters as they relate to the Convention, its Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
• Sponge City: A city that is designed to absorb, store, filter and reuse rainwater to mitigate flooding. Urban forests, parks and green roofs are some examples of how nature can be incorporated into the city’s design.
• Sustainable development: Development that meets current needs without undermining future well-being.

• Temperature anomaly: The difference between observed temperature and a long-term average.
• Threshold: A point beyond which climate impacts may become much more severe or irreversible.
• Tipping point: A critical threshold at which a system changes dramatically and may be difficult to reverse.

• UAE framework for Global Climate Resilience: Adopted at COP28 (2023), this framework gave concrete shape to the Global Goal on Adaptation for the first time by setting 11 specific, measurable targets: 7 thematic targets covering the key systems essential for human well-being and sustainable development; and 4 dimensional targets aligned with the stages of the national adaptation process; plus a 2027 target for multi-hazard early warning systems.
• UNFCCC: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the core international climate treaty framework. Sometimes referred to as “UNF-triple-C.”
• Upstream emissions: Emissions generated before a product or service reaches the end user, such as extraction or processing.
• Urban heat island: The tendency for cities to be hotter than surrounding areas because of built surfaces and limited vegetation.

• Vector-borne disease: An illness transmitted by organisms like mosquitoes or ticks, such as malaria or dengue fever. Climate change is expanding the geographic range and season length for many of these diseases.
• Vulnerability: The degree to which a community is susceptible to climate harm and unable to cope.

• Warning system, early: A system that alerts people before a hazardous climate event occurs.
• Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM): the broad UN climate architecture for loss and damage established in 2013 (COP19), with an Executive Committee (ExCom) overseeing its rolling five-year implementation plans, working with the Santiago Network to support countries.

• Zero-carbon: Producing no net carbon emissions from a process or system
• Zoonotic spillover: The transfer of a pathogen from animals to humans, which can be affected by climate and ecosystem change.

1.5°C / 2°C target: The temperature limits set by the Paris Agreement to avoid the most severe climate impacts, referring to how much warming above the pre-industrial baseline the world aims to stay under.