The Royal Meteorological Society, in partnership with the Grantham Institute, hosted a virtual event on 15 September 2021 to mark the release of the sixth major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (AR6) (IPCC, 2021a). Structured in two parts, the first session featured the principal findings of AR6, presented by lead IPCC authors, with the second exploring its implications. A popular event, the meeting attracted over 600 attendees (https://www.rmets.org/6th-major-ipcc-science-report-and-its-implications-recordings). Tim Osborne (University of East Anglia) chaired ‘Session 1: Findings of the Report’, covering the major scientific advances published in AR6. Peter Thorne (Maynooth University) opened the ‘Global Climate Change’ session with a presentation on observations and causes. He stressed the importance of AR6’s new statement that it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the planet, referencing palaeoclimate evidence to demonstrate how humans have fundamentally changed CO2 concentrations well beyond those seen in glacial–interglacial cycles. Posing the question: ‘What amount of climate change is due to humans?’ he responded: ‘all of it’. Amanda Maycock (Leeds University) spoke next on the topic of future climate projections, focusing on developments in climate models and methods. She provided a guide to the new scenarios, the use of emulators (simple climate models that emulate Earth System Model results) in AR6, and the inclusion of global climate indicators. She explained the narrowed uncertainty range for climate sensitivity and addressed the crossing time of 1.5 degC, highlighting the agreement between AR6 and SR1.5 (IPCC, 2019). Following Amanda's presentation, on the topic of extremes and surprises, Sonia Seneviratne (ETH Zurich) presented regional maps tagged with expected changes in extreme drought, heat and precipitation. She explained how extremes are projected to increase in both intensity and frequency, with this increase discernible for every +0.5 degC of warming (Figure 1). At 1.5 degC of warming, we already expect to see events unprecedented in the observational record (IPCC, 2021a). Joeri Rogelj (Imperial College London) opened the ‘Risks and Uncertainty’ segment of this session, speaking about emissions and the carbon cycle. He explained how higher emissions scenarios show a larger absolute land and ocean carbon sink, but that, as a proportion of total emissions, this carbon sink is smaller. Detailing how carbon budgets are calculated, he explained how a budget depends on certain normative choices, including the target temperature and the likelihood of keeping warming below this value. Richard Jones (Met Office), presenting on regional climate change, explained Climatic Impact Drivers (CIDs) and their relevance to impacts and risks. The Interactive Atlas was a centre piece, showing global and regional data, including CIDs. Tamsin Edwards (Kings College London) covered developments in the ocean and cryosphere, stressing the irreversibility of some of these changes, including rising ocean temperatures, the retreat of glaciers and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and sea-level rise. Emulators were mentioned again as a key tool in AR6 to improve the assessment of sea-level rise under different emissions scenarios. Questions covered the Zero Emissions Commitment, the independence of models and emulators, and linear versus exponential increases in extreme events. Discussions overlapped regarding the interaction between sea-level rise and increased risk of extreme coastal flooding. ‘Session 2: Implications of the report’ was chaired by Richard Black (Imperial, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit), and focused on the upcoming IPCC Working Group Three (WGIII) report and UK adaptation. In a pre-recorded message, guest speaker Claire O'Neill (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) spoke about the challenges of the Conference of Parties (COP) as a whole-economy approach, and the co-benefits of carbon sequestration. Opening the ‘Implications for COP26 and emissions’ segment, Jim Skea (Imperial College London) stressed the message that despite the dire situation, humans still had agency. He announced that AR6’s WGIII report will address habit forming (long-term behavioural change), the just transition (e.g. fair distribution of benefits, mitigation of harm) and air pollution. Stephan Singer (Climate Action Network) advocated for stronger finance for the poor and for action on adaptation as well as mitigation. Tom Russon (The Scottish Government) commented that existing climate policies focus on the energy sector, with the next challenges being how we heat our homes and travel. He stressed that it was important that these measures were aligned to wider priorities of society, giving the example of Scotland's Just Transition Commission. Gangar Shreedhar (LSE) spoke about the importance of taking a behaviourally informed approach, including habit forming, incentives, and framing changes in terms of their co-benefits. She spoke about how citizens assemblies can be used to aggregate citizens values. Addressing decarbonisation action taken to date, Tom Burke (E3G) spoke about the existence of sufficient technological solutions, and the ability and necessity to deploy these at scale and speed. He commented that the barriers against making the necessary changes are political, noting that incumbents are politically stronger than innovators. The final panel of the day covered ‘Implications for UK Adaptation’. Richard Millar (CCC) highlighted the significance of the Zero Emissions Commitment in understanding the adaptation needed for net zero. Nigel Miller (Defra) explored the question of why adaptation continues to take lower priority than mitigation. He posited that the diffuse nature of climate impacts, historically affecting only some people in some places at some times, made it hard to build momentum around the right action. Kathryn Brown (WWF) reframed the discussion around adaptation as one of known changes and certainty, citing inevitable changes already underway such as sea-level rise. She advocated for an approach that acknowledged the known minimum change, plus accounting for additional uncertainty. Representing financial institutions, Richenda Connel (Willis Tower Watson) spoke about the need for clear messaging and open access to data on the risk of extreme events. She explained how adaptation was mistakenly understood as the role of governments, though much was in the interest of the private sector due to their higher exposure to physical risk. Suraje Dessai (Leeds University) explained the need to start mainstreaming adaptation, and for science to be translated to decisions even in cases of high uncertainty. Questions and comments drew answers on the vulnerability of natural carbon stores, the validation of climate change in the public mind, and the opportunity for more jobs in climate services. Online link: https://www.rmets.org/6th-major-ipcc-science-report-and-its-implications-recordings Interactive atlas: https://interactive-atlas.ipcc.ch/