How hot will it get? EDHEC-EXCITE: a new way to explore climate futures

Global efforts to curb climate change are now under strain by the international political and economic context, even though the gap between climate pledges and delivery is becoming harder to ignore.

With national leaders blowing hot and cold at the expense of a clear course of action, policymakers, investors and business leaders are left searching for clearer insight into how the choices we make about emissions today will influence temperatures in the years ahead. Those changes will affect lives, livelihoods and the direction of the global economy (2).

The problem is that full climate models are often too difficult to comprehend. Much of the analysis behind climate policy still relies on highly complex scientific models, which is why simpler tools are needed to make their results easier to use and understand. Uncertainty over how sensitive the climate is to rising emissions is also growing, partly because “too hot” models project far more warming than historical data supports (3).

How to know which results to trust? 

EDHEC’s new temperature emulator, EDHEC-EXCITE, aims to fill that gap (1). Here is how and why.

Integrating and representing uncertainty: a challenge

This new emulator helps to better understand potential projections by showing how different emissions paths lead to different temperature outcomes. 

Developed by the EDHEC Climate Institute, the tool presents these results in a simple visual format while still reflecting the underlying climate science.

EDHEC-EXCITE is built around two main parts.

The first focuses on future emissions. It lets users choose an existing global emissions outlook or sketch their own by deciding when emissions peak, how quickly they fall and where they settle by 2100. Users can also enter a social cost of carbon to see what a given carbon price might mean for future emissions.

The second part of EDHEC-EXCITE focuses on temperature. It takes the chosen emissions path and shows how much the planet could warm as a result. To do this, the emulator draws on a wide set of leading climate models used by scientists around the world.

However, some of these models have recently been criticised for predicting far more warming than past observations support – more than 5°C of eventual warming, for example – so EDHEC’s emulator allows users to include or exclude them in its display. This keeps the results broad enough to show uncertainty, while still giving people the option to focus on the most widely trusted estimates.

When the emissions are fed to the selected climate models, EDHEC-EXCITE produces a set of possible warming paths that show how the world might heat under rapid emissions cuts versus a slower or delayed response, for instance. 

The range of results shows the uncertainty that exists even when emissions are known. The emulator shows this uncertainty openly, instead of reducing it to a single forecast that can be misleading.

Simplifying representation & decision without sacrificing the scientific approach

This matters at a time when climate models can give very different results. EDHEC-EXCITE cannot remove those differences, but it makes them easier to understand.

What further sets it apart from other tools is that it combines scientific rigour with ease of use. Full climate models are often too complex for ordinary users. This emulator aims to bridge that gap by giving people clear, science-based results they can use in practice.

And that is what helps policymakers see how decisions — such as speeding up or slowing down emissions-reduction plans — could influence future temperatures. It also supports financial regulators, giving them a clear view of how different scenarios could change future climate risks (4).

The EDHEC Climate Institute ultimately sees its emulator as a tool that brings climate science closer to real-world decisions. By making temperature outcomes easy to explore, the tool helps users see how different emissions choices lead to different climate results. And the world faces many such choices today.

For a recent example, the EU’s new carbon border tax has come into force for sectors such as steel and cement, raising costs for some exporters and prompting several countries to consider their own carbon-pricing systems (5). Measures like these will play a part in shaping future emissions, and therefore future temperatures.

Looking ahead, future versions of EDHEC-EXCITE could offer even more detail. EDHEC researchers are looking at adding regional temperature-results and links to economic and financial data, for example. They are already studying how temperature changes affect asset prices, which could allow the tool to become a base for analysing market-climate risk.

For now, EDHEC-EXCITE’s main strength is clarity. In a field crowded with technical reports and complex models, it gives users a straightforward way to explore the key question: how do different emissions choices shape future warming? And at a time when global action on climate change is in doubt, tools that make these choices clearer are more important than ever.

References

(1) EXCITE (EDHEC Cross-Model Climate Institute Temperature Emulator) is a professionally developed, interactive web-based tool created by the EDHEC Climate Institute - https://climateinstitute.edhec.edu/data-visualisations/excite-emulator

(2) Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, IPCC Report - https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

(3) The model of catastrophe, AEON (nov. 2025) - https://aeon.co/essays/todays-complex-climate-models-arent-equivalent-to-reality

(4) The (significantly) underestimated financial costs of climate change. Riccardo Rebonato, Dherminder Kainth and Lionel Melin. EDHEC Vox (June 2025) - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/the-significantly-underestimated-financial-costs-of-climate-change-transition-costs-physical-damages

(5) EU's carbon border tax on heavy industry goods goes into effect risking trade escalation. Euronews (Jan. 2026) - https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/01/eus-carbon-border-tax-on-heavy-industry-goods-goes-into-effect-risking-trade-escalation

Photo by Joshua Tsu via Unsplash