designed the analysis. S.L. processed the raw ISIMIP2b simulation output to generate the exposed land fraction data with help from T.G., D.N.B., J.V., and M.B.. K.E. generated the tropical cyclone tracks. F.Z. and S.W. ran the CaMa-Flood simulations and flood processing chain for generating the flood maps. W.T. performed all further analyses and wrote the manuscript with help from J.

An ever-growing body of evidence suggests that climate change is already impacting human and natural systems around the world. Global environmental assessments assessing this evidence, for example by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1 , face increasing challenges to appraise an exponentially growing literature 2 and diverse approaches to climate change attribution. Here we use the language representation model BERT to identify and classify studies on observed climate impacts, producing a machine-learning-assisted evidence map which provides the most comprehensive picture of the literature to date. We identify 100,724 (62,950 − 162,838) publications covering a broad range of impacts in human and natural systems across all continents. By combining our spatially resolved database with human-attributable changes in temperature and precipitation on the grid cell level, we infer that attributable climate change impacts may be occurring in regions encompassing 85% (80%) of the world's population (land area). Our results also reveal a substantial 'attribution gap' as robust evidence for attributable impacts is twice as prevalent in high income compared to low income countries. While substantial gaps remain on con dently establishing attributable climate impacts at the regional and sectoral level, our unique database illustrates the broad extent to which anthropogenic climate change may already be impacting natural systems and societies across the globe. MainThere is overwhelming evidence that the impacts of climate change are already being observed in human and natural systems 3 . These effects are emerging in a range of different systems and at different scales, covering a broad range of research elds from glaciology to agricultural science, and marine biology to migration and con ict research 1 . The evidence base for observed climate impacts is expanding 4 , and the wider climate literature is growing exponentially 5,6 . Systematic reviews and systematic maps offer structured ways to collectively identify and describe this evidence while maintaining transparency, attempting to ensure comprehensiveness and reduce bias 7 . However, their scope is often con ned to very speci c questions covering no more than dozens to hundreds of studies.In the climate science community, evidence-based assessments of observed climate change impacts are performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1 . Since the rst Assessment Report (AR) of the IPCC in 1990, we estimate that the number of studies relevant to observed climate impacts published per year has increased by more than two orders of magnitude (Fig. 1a). Since the third AR, published in 2001, the number has increased ten-fold. This exponential growth in peer-reviewed scienti c publications on climate change 5,6 is already pushing manual expert assessments to their limits. To address this issue, recent work has investigated ways to handle big literature in sustainability science by scaling systematic review and map methods to large bodies ...

Weak governance is one of the key obstacles for sustainable development. Undoubtedly, improvement of governance comes with a broad range of co-benefits including countries' abilities to respond to pressing global challenges such as climate change. However, beyond the qualitative acknowledgement of its importance, quantifications of future pathways of governance are still lacking. This study provides projections of future governance in line with the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). We find that under a "rocky road" scenario, 30% of the global population would still live in countries characterized by weak governance in 2050, while under a "green road" scenario weak governance would almost be entirely overcome over the same time frame. Based on pathways for governance, we estimate the adaptive capacity of countries to climate change. Limits to adaptive capacity exist even under optimistic pathways beyond mid-century. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for governance in assessments of climate change impacts.Future societies' resilience against global challenges such as climate change hinges upon successful implementation of policies, actions and development strategies 1 . Those actions need to be facilitated by the quality and efficiency of governance, which makes governance an essential ingredient for assessing countries future climate vulnerability and coping capacity 2 . More broadly, institutions and governance are key determinants of long-term stability and