Abstract:Climate change has been widely recognized as one of most severe risks that the world faces. The recent 50 years are the warmest period in the last 2 000 years with respect to surface temperature averaged over the Belt and Road regions, which is mainly attributed to continuously increasing and accumulating of carbon emissions from human activities. Since the 1980s, over the Belt and Road regions mean climate change is characterized as surface warming at a faster rate, increased precipitation and evaporation, and accelerated sea level rise among others, and extreme weather and climate events such as hot extremes, rainstorms and floods, and droughts have become more frequent and severe. As a consequence, climate disasters over the Belt and Road regions in any past decade of the 21st century have increased above fivefold compared to those over the 1970s. Significant and widespread changes in climate systems over the Belt and Road regions in the recent 50 years are mainly driven by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and are also substantially affected by human-induced aerosols and land use and cover changes among others. Multi-model ensemble projections show that over the Belt and Road regions before achieving global carbon neutrality, mean and extreme climate changes will generally evolve nonlinearly along current trends, and climate change risks will continuously increase to an unprecedented level. In the period of carbon neutrality, climate change characteristics are projected to exhibit new patterns, with disaster risks undergoing new changes over the Belt and Road regions. Major climate disaster risks and their spatial heterogeneity in the following decades are further assessed and identified, and recommendations and strategies for dealing with climate disaster risks are provided.